The world is a quickly changing place and it's getting harder and harder to stay on top of the news. With this in mind, we've just released a Google News–based element for webmasters and developers. This makes it easy to integrate headlines and previews from Google News into any webpage, and for newspapers to reach new audiences across the web. Whether your visitors are interested in business, entertainment or fashion, you control the types of stories in your personal news show. You can input keywords like "Obama " or "Superbowl" or broad topics like "world news" or "politics."
For more information, check out our post on the AJAX Search API Blog or get started with our wizard to automatically generate the code for you.
About Me
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
India Internet Bus Project rolls in
Today, we launched the Internet Bus Project, an initiative designed to showcase the benefits of the Internet to the people across the cities of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Over the last few years, we've been witnessing a steady growth in Internet adoption, but we wanted to do more to directly engage the offline population of India. So we're hitting the road over the next month and a half to demonstrate how the Internet can make everyday tasks simple with tools like Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps and more.
To learn more about the project and get updates from the road, visit the Google India Blog or the Internet Bus Project website.
To learn more about the project and get updates from the road, visit the Google India Blog or the Internet Bus Project website.
Doodle 4 Google — tell us what you wish for the world
Today, we're announcing our second annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles are the special "dressed-up" logos we run on our homepage for holidays and other events, and Doodle 4 Google is an opportunity for one child to have his/her artwork displayed on our homepage as a doodle for hundreds of millions of people to see. This year's theme is "What I Wish for the World," as we really want to tap into not only children's creativity but also what they want their future to look like.We're very excited this year to be partnering with the Smithsonian's, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Since Cooper-Hewitt is focused on design and education and fostering the brightest design minds of tomorrow, they were a natural partner for Doodle 4 Google. Their partnership also means that this year's prizes not only include having your artwork on the Google homepage for a day, a college scholarship, and a technology grant for your school, but also having your work (and that of all 40 finalists) exhibited at a Smithsonian museum!
Most of this year's contest remains the same as last year's. (For inspiration, you can see Grace Moon's beautiful winning doodle "Up In the Clouds" in our Doodle Gallery). However, there are a few changes. First, we've increased the college scholarship prize for the national winner to $15,000. We've also added a $10,000 prize for the school district that submits the most high-quality entries. Finally, in partnership with Cooper-Hewitt, we'll be celebrating the 40 finalists and announcing the national winner in New York City, to coincide with the opening of the exhibit. Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements.
Only students from registered schools can enter, so teachers, if you want to participate please register your school by March 17, 2009. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2009.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience
Monday, February 2, 2009
Dive into the new Google Earth
As you read this, I am at the beautiful California Academy of Sciences, announcing the launch of the newest version of Google Earth. This launch is particularly special to me because it marks the moment when Google Earth becomes much more complete — it now has an ocean.
Didn't Google Earth always have an ocean? Technically, yes, well, sort of. We have always had a big blue expanse and some low-resolution shading to suggest depth. But starting today we have a much more detailed bathymetric map (the ocean floor), so you can actually drop below the surface and explore the nooks and crannies of the seafloor in 3D. While you're there you can explore thousands of data points including videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expeditions, and much more.
We were joined at the Academy by many of the dozens of ocean scientists and advocates who helped make this project a reality: friends from National Geographic, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the US Navy, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to name just a few. Above all, I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Sylvia Earle, who cornered me at a conference three years ago and told me that Google Earth was great but that it wasn't finished (you can read more about that encounter on the Lat Long blog). As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. We on the Google Earth team had been working hard to build a rich 3D map of the world, but we had largely ignored the oceans — two thirds of the planet. Inspired by Sylvia, the team got to work. I hope you are as excited as I am to explore our new Ocean and all of the fascinating stories and images our partners have contributed.
But that's not all we launched today. In addition to Ocean, we introduced new features that we hope will enhance the way people interact with Google Earth and use it to communicate with the world.
Members of the Google Earth team will be publishing in-depth posts about all of the new features in Google Earth 5.0 on the Lat Long blog all week, so be sure to check back there often. And check out our video tour below.
Didn't Google Earth always have an ocean? Technically, yes, well, sort of. We have always had a big blue expanse and some low-resolution shading to suggest depth. But starting today we have a much more detailed bathymetric map (the ocean floor), so you can actually drop below the surface and explore the nooks and crannies of the seafloor in 3D. While you're there you can explore thousands of data points including videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expeditions, and much more.
We were joined at the Academy by many of the dozens of ocean scientists and advocates who helped make this project a reality: friends from National Geographic, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the US Navy, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to name just a few. Above all, I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Sylvia Earle, who cornered me at a conference three years ago and told me that Google Earth was great but that it wasn't finished (you can read more about that encounter on the Lat Long blog). As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. We on the Google Earth team had been working hard to build a rich 3D map of the world, but we had largely ignored the oceans — two thirds of the planet. Inspired by Sylvia, the team got to work. I hope you are as excited as I am to explore our new Ocean and all of the fascinating stories and images our partners have contributed.
But that's not all we launched today. In addition to Ocean, we introduced new features that we hope will enhance the way people interact with Google Earth and use it to communicate with the world.
- Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the "clock" icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so.
- Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.
- 3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting "Mars" from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of other interesting features.
Members of the Google Earth team will be publishing in-depth posts about all of the new features in Google Earth 5.0 on the Lat Long blog all week, so be sure to check back there often. And check out our video tour below.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
"This site may harm your computer" on every search result?!?!
If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.
We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.
Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.
Thanks for your understanding.
Update at 10:29 am PST: This post was revised as more precise information became available (changes are in blue). Here's StopBadware's explanation.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.
We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.
Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.
Thanks for your understanding.
Update at 10:29 am PST: This post was revised as more precise information became available (changes are in blue). Here's StopBadware's explanation.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
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