Games in Google+: fun that fits your schedule

My family has a games closet. Inside you’ll find a few decks of cards, two decades’ worth of board games and a Twister mat for those times when we’re feeling limber. Playing games is a great way for us to spend quality time with each other (and a little healthy competition never hurt anyone either).

Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.

That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences. Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t.

When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting—click the games button at the top of your stream. You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.

If you’re not interested in games, it’s easy to ignore them. Your stream will remain focused on conversations with the people you care about.

You’ll have a fun initial set of games to play with on Google+. Thanks to the developers who’ve worked with us to make them available:

If you’re a developer interested in building games for Google+, you can learn more on our new Google+ developer blog.

Today we’re starting to gradually roll out games in Google+. We look forward to making them fully available to everyone in Google+ soon. When you see a Games page in your account, please give games a try and send us feedback. Look for the "send feedback" button in the bottom right-hand corner of any page in Google+. Thanks for playing! Like the rest of the Google+ project, we're just getting started.

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering

We love Lucy

Lucille Ball may have been born 100 years ago today, but her jokes are timeless. Having grown up with the comedic genius of “I Love Lucy,” it’s hard to believe that Lucy, Desi, Fred, and Ethel wrapped up the initial series in 1957. Lucy’s creativity, absurdity, and ever-changing facial expressions (especially when she was scarfing down candy, stomping on grapes or touting a new energy drink) have brought joy and laughter to generations of viewers.

We’re incredibly happy to celebrate her birthday with a doodle to highlight her brilliant career as an actress and businesswoman. Through the old-timey TV live on the google.com homepage all day on August 6th, you can flip the six channels for a special Lucy broadcast.

Happy birthday, Lucy — we still love you!

Posted by Jennifer Hom, Doodler

Inside Google's search office

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog)

I’ve been working with Matt Cutts and Ben Gomes in the same office for over 10 years. We work on search every day, and earlier this week, we took our office talk to the stage at an event hosted by the Churchill Club. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan moderated our in-depth discussion on search, how it works, and what’s ahead for us in the future. We also reminisced about first joining Google, the time my car ran out of gas as Ben and I discussed a change to the algorithm, and other great memories over the years.

Come sit inside our office for a chat about Google Search:

• To hear more about the principles that drive changes to the algorithm and how these changes are tested and implemented, go to 15:40
• To hear the discussion on why we don’t hand-pick results, start watching at 41:04
• For more on my vision for the future of search, jump to 1:12:28
• Guess who Danny thinks is the brains, looks, and brawn of this operation at 1:08 (hint: I’m the brains).
  

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Restoring Bletchley Park, birthplace of modern computing

Late last year Google backed the bid to buy the papers of the British computer scientist and wartime codebreaker Alan Turing and return them to their rightful home at Bletchley Park. We were thrilled when this was finally achieved in February.

Now we’ve joined forces with the Bletchley Park Trust to help raise funds to rebuild Block C, the original wartime building that once housed the vast punched card index—in essence, the “search engine” at the heart of Bletchley Park’s decryption activity.

Block C at Bletchley Park, awaiting restoration

Bletchley Park played a pivotal role in computing history. For decades the extraordinary achievements of its veterans were hidden by order of the UK’s Official Secrets Act. It was not until the 1980s that the full secret of Colossus—the world’s first electronic programmable computer—was revealed. Housed at Bletchley Park, Colossus and other custom-built machines were crucial aids in the code-breaking, reputed to have shortened World War II by two years.

Tony Sale, leader of the Colossus rebuild project, demos it 

at the National Museum of Computing

Today, Block C is derelict. We hope to help restore it to serve as a visitor and learning centre for both Bletchley Park and the UK’s National Museum of Computing. The fund-raising campaign kicked off this week with a Google-supported garden party in the Bletchley Park grounds, at which over £10,000 was raised. We still have a long way to go, though, so if you’d like to contribute, please donate at the Bletchley Park website.

If you’re in London, Bletchley Park is less than an hour away by train, and well worth an afternoon’s visit. You can see a working replica of Colossus, along with many other exhibits highlighting wartime work at Bletchley Park and the UK’s rich computing heritage.


Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations for Europe, Middle East and Africa

Google News highlights unique content with Editors’ Picks

(Cross-posted on the Google News Blog)

News organizations tell stories online in ways that bring together the best of traditional and digital journalism, whether that involves long-form investigative features, compelling photo slideshows or interactive maps and charts that add new levels of engagement to the day's news. To help connect you to the best works of news publishers, Google News is introducing a new section in the right-hand column of the U.S. edition. The section is called "Editors' Picks,” and it displays original content that publishers have selected as highlights from their publications. This is the latest addition to recent improvements we’ve made to the variety and presence of stories and multimedia on Google News.

An array of news organizations, including local, national and niche publishers, are now using Editors’ Picks to display their best, most engaging content. Because Google News relies on algorithms, Editors' Picks will always be just that—picks provided by publishers themselves, and not by Google. You can browse a set of publisher feeds that span national, specific and local interests—like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, the Guardian and The Root, among many others—via the side-to-side arrows next to each publisher's logo. The feeds you see are chosen based on a variety of factors, including your news preferences. If you’re interested in using source preferences on Google News, Editors' Picks helps you do that with the slider that appears just below the articles.

You may have first noticed Editors’ Picks as an experiment last year. Based on the data from that experiment, we have been working with nearly two dozen publishers in recent months and have seen a positive response from readers and publishers alike: readers get the news they're interested in from the sources they trust, and publishers receive higher traffic to their websites. We encourage any news organizations that are interested to visit our Help Center to get started.

Posted by Yogita Mehta, Software Engineer, Google News Team