Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard!

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard. Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account? The Google Dashboard offers a simple view into the data associated with your account — easily and concisely in one location.<br /><br />Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data. In the past, we've taken numerous steps in this area, investing in educating our users with our <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html">Privacy Center</a>, making it easier to move data in and out of Google with our <a href="http://www.dataliberation.org/">Data Liberation Front</a>, and allowing you to control the ads you see with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUkm_gKgdQc">interest-based advertising</a>. Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy, and today, we're happy to announce that we're doing even more.<br /><br />In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over your own data, we've built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we're delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard. Watch this quick video to learn more and then try it out for yourself at <a href="http://www.google.com/dashboard">www.google.com/dashboard</a>.<br /><br /><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZPaJPxhPq_g&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZPaJPxhPq_g&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Alma Whitten, Software Engineer, Yariv Adan, Product Manager, and Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience</span>

Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard!

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard. Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account? The G...

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Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend's New York blog!

Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn't always very easy to find in one simple place. That's why today we're rolling out a new <a href="http://www.google.com/experimental/">experiment on Google Labs</a> called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. It should be available for everyone to try by the end of the day, so be sure to check back.<br /><br />A lot of people write about New York, so if I do a search for [new york] on Google, my best friend's New York blog probably isn't going to show up on the first page of my results. Probably what I'll find are some well-known and official sites. We've taken steps to improve the relevance of our search results with <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/personally-speaking.html">personalization</a>, but today's launch takes that one step further. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. When I do a simple query for [new york], Google Social Search includes my friend's blog on the results page under the heading "Results from people in your social circle for New York." I can also filter my results to see only content from my social circle by clicking "Show options" on the results page and clicking "Social." Check out this video for a demo:<br /><br /><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZqWJxgp-_mU&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZqWJxgp-_mU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web — you can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we've done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant. The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you're following on Twitter or FriendFeed. The results are specific to you, so you need to be signed in to your Google Account to use Social Search. If you use Gmail, we'll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers groups. And if you use Google Reader, we'll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.<br /><br />To learn more about how Social Search works behind the scenes, including the choices and control you have over the content you see and share, read our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165228">help center article</a> or watch this video:<br /><br /><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BlpTjP6h6Ms&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BlpTjP6h6Ms&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />This feature is an experiment, but we've been using it at Google and the results have been exciting. We'd love to hear your <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=5818e141dc58c2bd&hl=en">feedback</a>. Oh, and don't forget to <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles">create a public Google profile</a> to expand your social circle and more easily find the information you're looking for (including that New York blog).<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead and Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager</span>

Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend's New York blog!

Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content i...

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Managing your reputation through search results

<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Cross-posted on the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/managing-your-reputation-through-search.html">Webmaster Central Blog</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">)</span></span></div><div><br /></div>A few years ago I couldn't wait to get married. Because I was in love, yeah, but more importantly, so that I could take my husband's name and people would stop getting that ridiculous picture from college as a top result when they searched for me on Google.<br /><br />After a few years of working here, though, I've learned that you don't have to change your name just because it brings up some embarrassing search results. Below are some tips for "reputation management": influencing how you're perceived online, and what information is available relating to you.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Think twice</span><br /><br />The first step in reputation management is preemptive: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Think twice before putting your personal information online</span>. Remember that although something might be appropriate for the context in which you're publishing it, search engines can make it very easy to find that information later, out of context, including by people who don't normally visit the site where you originally posted it. Translation: don't assume that just because your mom doesn't read your blog, she'll never see that post about the new tattoo you're hiding from her.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Tackle it at the source</span><br /><br />If something you dislike has already been published, the next step is to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">try to remove it from the site where it's appearing</span>. Rather than immediately contacting Google, it's important to first remove it from the site where it's being published. Google doesn't own the Internet; our search results simply reflect what's already out there on the web. Whether or not the content appears in Google's search results, people are still going to be able to access it — on the original site, through other search engines, through social networking sites, etc. — if you don't remove it from the original site. You need to tackle this at the source.<br /><ul><li>If the content in question is on a site you own, easy — just remove it. It will naturally drop out of search results after we recrawl the page and discover the change. </li><li>It's also often easy to remove content from sites you don't own if you put it there, such as photos you've uploaded, or content on your profile page.</li><li>If you can't remove something yourself, you can <a href="http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=9109">contact the site's webmaster</a> and ask them to remove the content or the page in question.</li></ul>After you or the site's webmaster has removed or edited the page, you can expedite the removal of that content from Google using <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=92865">our URL removal tool</a>.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Proactively publish information</span><br /><br />Sometimes, however, you may not be able to get in touch with a site's webmaster, or they may refuse to take down the content in question. For example, if someone posts a negative review of your business on a restaurant review or consumer complaint site, that site might not be willing to remove the review. If you can't get the content removed from the original site, you probably won't be able to completely remove it from Google's search results, either. Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">proactively publishing useful, positive information</span> about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">want</span> people to see to outperform the stuff you don't want them to see, you'll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.<br /><br />You can publish or encourage positive content in a variety of ways:<br /><ul><li>Create a <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles">Google profile</a>. When people search for your name, Google can display a link to <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/search-for-me-on-google.html">your Google profile in our search results</a> and people can click through to see whatever information you choose to publish in your profile.</li><li>If a customer writes a negative review of your business, you could ask some of your other customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.</li><li>If a blogger is publishing unflattering photos of you, take some pictures you prefer and publish them in a blog post or two.</li><li>If a newspaper wrote an article about a court case that put you in a negative light, but which was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a follow-up article about your exoneration. (This last one may seem far-fetched, but believe it or not, we've gotten multiple requests from people in this situation.)</li></ul>Hope these tips have been helpful! Feel free to stop by our Web Search Forum and <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=31539c32bdd9eebf&hl=en">share your own advice or stories</a> about how you manage your reputation online.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst</span>

Managing your reputation through search results

(Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog ) A few years ago I couldn't wait to get married. Because I was in love, yeah, but more impo...

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The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

<span style="font-style: italic;">This post is the latest in an ongoing <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-we-help-track-flu-trends.html">series</a> about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed. </span><br /><br />What if you could do a little something to improve the world during your daily drive to work? Here are a few ideas: tell everybody in the city when you're stuck in slow-moving traffic; warn the drivers on the freeway behind you that they should consider an alternate route; tell the people still at home that they should spend another ten minutes reading the morning news before they leave for work; tell your city government that they might want to change the timing of that traffic light at the highway on-ramp. Of course, you can't just get on the phone and call everybody, and your one traffic report from your one spot on the road might not help much anyway. But if everybody on the road, all at once, could tell the world how fast their car is moving, and we could make it easy for anybody to check that information on their computer or cell phone, well — then we'd be getting somewhere.<br /><br />If you use <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html">Google Maps for mobile</a> with GPS enabled on your phone, that's exactly what you can do. When you choose to enable Google Maps with <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/mylocation/index.html">My Location</a>, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qXddE05UTfYPov7sSX0DE7xKCi9UpLrhx-ge43mxq2kk0RWM9eACvwlPPZWdHPXTrn8ZyZxKUAS2DC4EvuC1q0KEfFWj5G0aqKYWuZW8iLaZRq4YGAV39zj84WJe1O4_HgCUXBnMav1q/s1600-h/gmm_arterials_z15.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373770641888093074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qXddE05UTfYPov7sSX0DE7xKCi9UpLrhx-ge43mxq2kk0RWM9eACvwlPPZWdHPXTrn8ZyZxKUAS2DC4EvuC1q0KEfFWj5G0aqKYWuZW8iLaZRq4YGAV39zj84WJe1O4_HgCUXBnMav1q/s400/gmm_arterials_z15.png" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />This week we're<a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/08/arterial-traffic-available-on-google.html"> expanding our traffic layer</a> to cover all U.S. highways and arterials when data is available. We're able to do this thanks in no small part to the data contributed by our users. This is exactly the kind of technology that we love at Google because it's so easy for a single person to help out, but can be incredibly powerful when a lot of people use it together. Imagine if you knew the exact traffic speed on every road in the city — every intersection, backstreet and freeway on-ramp — and how that would affect the way you drive, help the environment and impact the way our government makes road planning decisions. This idea, which we geeks call "crowdsourcing," isn't new. Ever since GPS location started coming to mainstream devices, people have been thinking of ways to use it to figure out how fast the traffic is moving. But for us to really make it work, we had to solve problems of scale (because you can't get useful traffic results until you have a LOT of devices reporting their speeds) and privacy (because we don't want anybody to be able to analyze Google's traffic data to see the movement of a particular phone, even when that phone is completely anonymous).<br /><br />We achieve scale by making Google Maps for mobile easy to install and use, and by making it easy for people to provide information about their own vehicle speed. There's no extra device to plug into your car and no extra software to buy. Google Maps is <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps.html">free</a> and works with most cell phones, and the number of cell phones with GPS is rising every day. Some phones, such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Palm Pre, come with Google Maps and traffic crowdsourcing pre-installed (the iPhone Maps application, however, does not support traffic crowdsourcing). Google is fortunate to have a lot of people using our products, and that scale helps make our products better.<br /><br />We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start. We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don't want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it. We take the privacy concerns related to user location data seriously, and have worked hard to protect the privacy of users who share this data — but we still understand that not everybody will want to participate. If you'd like to stop your phone from sending anonymous location data back to Google, you can find opt-out instructions <a href="http://support.google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81875">here</a>.<br /><br />We've already been able to provide useful traffic information with the help of our existing mobile users, but we hope that is just the start. As GPS-enabled phones and data plans get less expensive, more people will be able to participate. Crowdsourcing traffic gives us a way to harness bits of location data from our users and give it back to them in a form they can use to make impactful decisions that affect their free time, their pocketbooks and the environment. The more people use it, the better it will get. So next time you're sitting in morning traffic, turn on Google Maps for mobile and let someone else know they can hit the snooze button one more time. Tomorrow morning, they might do the same for you.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager for Google Maps</span>

The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. -...

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Understanding health-related searches

As we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/search-experiments-large-and-small.html">blogged last summer</a>, there are lots of experiments running on Google web search all over the world. Today we've started a temporary experiment that some people might find interesting: we're researching how Google users search the Internet when they or someone they know is feeling sick.<br /><br />Understanding how people search when they're feeling sick is an important problem to solve, as it can help improve projects like <a href="http://google.org/flutrends">Google Flu Trends</a>, which uses aggregated search data to detect influenza epidemics. Statistics gathered in this experiment may also help Google deliver more relevant search results in the future. For example, someone who searches for [arthritis pain] to understand why an aging parent is experiencing joint pain might want to learn about nearby health facilities and potential treatments, whereas somebody who searches for [arthritis pain] because she is doing a research project might want results about how common arthritis is and what its risk factors are. Rather than make educated guesses about how many users are searching because they're sick, we're running this experiment to collect real statistics. This is not a permanent change, but a short-term experiment. A small percentage of random health-related searches will trigger the poll question.<br /><br />For example, at the bottom of the search results for [headache], some users will see a survey which asks whether they were searching because they or someone they know has a headache:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdYuXY6tR76mxwyxtmd-lZ8641_kUweNtGuPTMITfV7pZJxpsPoAOifrZOqaa-AC3rRXgKBO-Sr8bZJ0XVamEPsVFOpfU-KvR2fDsb5DLBgvz2cwsNdNzAo_X0R0QqCuyMjQ36X6WNTv0/s1600-h/RUSICK" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335411363823702674" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdYuXY6tR76mxwyxtmd-lZ8641_kUweNtGuPTMITfV7pZJxpsPoAOifrZOqaa-AC3rRXgKBO-Sr8bZJ0XVamEPsVFOpfU-KvR2fDsb5DLBgvz2cwsNdNzAo_X0R0QqCuyMjQ36X6WNTv0/s400/RUSICK" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 40px;" /></a><br />Similarly, if you happen to search for [ibuprofen], a common anti-inflammatory drug, you might see a survey which asks whether you were searching because you or somebody you know is taking ibuprofen:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwELINNrKrYg-E1kEd_NBrhhUZi0l9YF8pxS6LsUoTIe1qCrLL7yxCamVlv2me4IGJz4bzS0AoaRpRGqoEVdaQBkfHSzoy_8bYW6kF3z22vrGhHurbdUpuN0soST1jKDWiNL3paFG1EE0Y/s1600-h/RUSICK2" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335411498581474978" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwELINNrKrYg-E1kEd_NBrhhUZi0l9YF8pxS6LsUoTIe1qCrLL7yxCamVlv2me4IGJz4bzS0AoaRpRGqoEVdaQBkfHSzoy_8bYW6kF3z22vrGhHurbdUpuN0soST1jKDWiNL3paFG1EE0Y/s400/RUSICK2" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 40px;" /></a><br />Data collected in this survey will be aggregated across thousands of users. Survey responses will be stored together with the original search query, but will not be associated with email addresses or other personally identifiable information. Survey data will not be used for advertising — it will only be used to help Google improve health-related search results and to help refine public health trends based on aggregated search queries, much like Google Flu Trends. You can learn more about how Google protects users' privacy at our <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy">Privacy Center</a>.<br /><br />For more information, please take a look at our <a href="http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/feeling-sick-faq.html">FAQ</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Product Manager and Jeremy Ginsberg, Software Engineer</span>

Understanding health-related searches

As we blogged last summer , there are lots of experiments running on Google web search all over the world. Today we've started a tempora...

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Making ads more interesting

At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks.<br /><br />That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of our <a href="http://adsense.google.com/">AdSense</a> partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.<br /><br />We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.<br /><br />We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.<br /><br />Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.<br /><br />This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.<br /><ul><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Transparency</span> - We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Choice</span> - We have built a tool called <a href="http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/">Ads Preferences Manager</a>, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Control</span> - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html">here</a>. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a <a href="http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin">plug-in</a> for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.<br /></li></ul>To find out more about what Google is doing in this important area, please visit our <a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/giving-consumers-control-over-ads.html">Public Policy blog</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy">Privacy Center</a>.<br /><br />Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. We believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management</span>

Making ads more interesting

At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, serv...

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See where your friends are with Google Latitude

How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude.<br /><br />Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather.<br /><br />And with Latitude, not only can you see your friends' locations on a map, but you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly. It's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about.<br /><br />Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls . Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide. Everything is under your control and, of course, you can sign out of Latitude at any time. <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=u9H4xaTspaQ">Check out this video</a> to learn more about the privacy features.<br /><br />Finally, since we'd like you to be able to use Latitude with <font style="font-style: italic;">any</font> of your friends, we've been working hard to make it available to as many people as possible. Today, Latitude is available in 27 countries, and we hope to add more soon.<br /><br />Ready to share your location? If you have a mobile smartphone, visit google.com/latitude on your phone's web browser to download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. Latitude is available on Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days. We expect it will be coming to the iPhone, through Google Mobile App, very soon.<br /><br />No smartphone? No worries. Visit <a href="http://google.com/latitude">google.com/latitude</a> on your desktop or laptop to install the Latitude iGoogle gadget and share your location right from your computer. If you have <a href="http://gears.google.com/">Google Gears</a> installed in your browser (you do by default if you use Google Chrome), you can automatically share your location; otherwise, manually set your location to let your friends know where you are.<br /><br />Visit the <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/02/locate-your-friends-in-real-time-with.html">Google Mobile blog</a> for more details, and check out the video below to see Latitude in action.<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Q-Oq-9enE-k&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Q-Oq-9enE-k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><font class="byline-author">Posted by Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering, Google mobile team</font>

See where your friends are with Google Latitude

How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily ...

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Raising data privacy awareness

For the second year, the U.S. and Canada are joining 27 European countries to celebrate <a href="http://www.intel.com/policy/dataprivacy.htm" id="naqe" title="Data Privacy Day 2009">Data Privacy Day</a> today. As we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/celebrating-data-privacy.html" id="aw3:" title="explained">explained</a> last year, the lack of understanding about online data protection is a global issue. As increasing amounts of data get uploaded to the Internet every day, it becomes more and more important for people to understand the benefits and risks of online communications and to learn how to use available tools to control and manage the information they share online.<br /><br />To mark this special day of awareness, we are supporting an event hosted by the Information Technology Association of America called "<a href="http://www.itaa.org/events/event.cfm?EventID=2849" id="m.2p" title=""Data Privacy Day: Increasing Privacy Awareness and Trust."">Data Privacy Day: Increasing Privacy Awareness and Trust</a>." We'll join U.S. and European government officials and key members of the privacy community on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, to discuss how to increase public awareness about data privacy. This event is a part of our ongoing constructive dialogue with regulators and legislators, consumer and industry groups, and think tanks and privacy advocates to discuss how to protect user information.<br /><br />Our efforts to raise data privacy awareness extend beyond the public policy arena; we aim to connect directly with our users, too. We're committed to protecting users' online privacy by following the principles of transparency and choice. We're transparent about the data we collect, and we design products that give people control over the information they share. Earlier this year, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/privacy-made-easier.html" id="b:_5" title="revamped our Privacy Center">revamped our Privacy Center</a>, where we offer <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy_faq.html" id="tjsk" title="information">information</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FCEE46AA997A23D9" id="p9cs" title="tips">tips</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/googleprivacy" id="a-s1" title="videos">videos</a> that explain Google's privacy practices and show people how they can control what data they share. The Privacy Center also includes a link to a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-we-help-track-flu-trends.html" id="x3jy" title="blog series">series of blog posts</a> about how we use data to improve our products and services for our users. We recently translated the Privacy Center into multiple languages so that we can better serve people all around the world. We're also continuously working on innovative services and features that make information available to people in new ways, but with built-in privacy controls. For example, we introduced privacy-protective <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/05/street-view-revisits-manhattan.html" id="lwfx" title="face-blurring">face-blurring</a> for Street View earlier this year. And the launch of our browser, Google Chrome, included a feature for surfing the Internet in "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWk8uGdUEkQ&feature=channel_page" id="esch" title="incognito mode">incognito mode</a>."<br /><br />For the coming year, we want to improve our privacy practices even more by engaging in further dialogue with people who use our products and services, offering up easier-to-understand policies, and providing more privacy tools and controls. We hope that you'll take a few minutes on Data Privacy Day to <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html">explore our Privacy Center</a> and learn about our commitment to this important issue.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Peter Fleischer and Jane Horvath, Global Privacy Counsel</span>

Raising data privacy awareness

For the second year, the U.S. and Canada are joining 27 European countries to celebrate Data Privacy Day today. As we explained last year,...

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Google Chrome (BETA)

Since we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html">first released Google Chrome</a>, the development team has been hard at work improving the stability and overall performance of the browser. In just 100 days, we have reached more than 10 million active users around the world (on all seven continents, no less) and released 14 updates to the product. We're excited to announce that with today's fifteenth release we are taking off the "beta" label!<br /><br />Google Chrome is a better browser today thanks to the many users who sent their feedback and the many more who enabled automatic crash reports, helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues. Some of the areas where we've made great progress include:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video). </span>Video and audio glitches were among the <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/beta-and-plugin-improvements-in-google.html">most common bugs fixed</a> during the beta period. If you had problems watching videos with Google Chrome in the past, you should be pleasantly surprised with the performance now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Even more speed.</span> Google Chrome starts up fast, loads pages quickly, and just keeps getting faster. Since the first beta, the V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster on the <a href="http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html">SunSpider benchmark</a> and 1.5 times faster on the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/v8/run.html">V8 benchmark</a> — and there is more speed to come.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bookmark manager and privacy controls.</span> We heard you! <a href="http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95714">Better bookmark features</a> were a top request from our users. It's now easier to switch between another browser and Google Chrome with the bookmark import and export features, and we added a new simple way to manage large numbers of bookmarks, too. We also wanted to make it even easier for you to control your browsing data, so all of the features in Google Chrome which affect user privacy are now grouped in one place with <a href="http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=114836">detailed explanations for each one</a>.<br /><br />We've taken security very seriously from the beginning and we will continue to look for ways to make Google Chrome and all browsers even more secure. Google Chrome's <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/security-architecture.html">unique sandbox technology</a> creates an additional layer of defense against harmful software, while the <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2008/11/understanding-phishing-and-malware.html">Safe Browsing</a> feature provides protection against phishing and malware attacks for many browser users.<br /><br />We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some common browser features such as form autofill and RSS support in the near future. We are also developing an <a href="http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions">extensions platform</a> along with support for Mac and Linux. If you are already using Google Chrome, the update system ensures that you get the latest bug fixes and security patches, so you will get the newest version automatically in the next few days. If you haven't used Google Chrome for a while, now might be a good time to give it another spin.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-blog-ogb&utm_medium=blog&brand=CHMP">Download Google Chrome</a> and try it out. <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome">Let us know what you think</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by By Sundar Pichai, VP, Product Management, and Linus Upson, Engineering Director</span>

Google Chrome (BETA)

Since we first released Google Chrome , the development team has been hard at work improving the stability and overall performance of the br...

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How we help track flu trends

<span style="font-style: italic;">This post is the latest in an ongoing <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-data-to-fight-webspam.html">series</a> about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed.</span><br /><br />Google search isn't just about looking up <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=football+scores">football scores</a> from last weekend or finding a great <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rome+hotel">hotel</a> for your next vacation. It can also be used for the public good. Yesterday, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/tracking-flu-trends.html">announced Google Flu Trends</a>, which uses aggregated search data in an effort to confront the challenge of influenza outbreaks.<br /><br />By taking <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html">Google Trends</a> — where you can see snapshots of what's on the public's collective mind — and applying the tool to a public health problem, our engineers found that there was a correlation between flu-related queries and the actual flu. They created a model for near real-time estimates about outbreaks, in the hopes that both health care professionals and the general public would use this tool to better prepare for flu season.<br /><br />Since we launched yesterday, the response from the medical community has been positive. "The earlier the warning, the earlier prevention and control measures can be put in place," said Dr. Lyn Finelli of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12flu.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin">The New York Times</a>. "[T]his could prevent cases of influenza." You can <a href="http://www.google.org/flutrends/">check out the tool</a> for yourself.<br /><br />We couldn't have built this flu detection system without analyzing historical patterns. Because flu season is different every year, just a few months of data wouldn't have done the trick. For example, the 2003-2004 flu season was unusually severe in many regions. The data from that season was especially robust and allowed us to discover a more accurate, reliable set of flu-related terms. To learn more about how we built the system, see this page on <a href="http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/how.html">how Flu Trends works</a>.<br /><br />Because we're committed to protecting your privacy, we made sure that the searches that we analyze for Google Flu Trends are not drawn from personally-identifiable search histories but rather from an aggregated set of hundreds of billions of searches.<br /><br />In order to provide a rough geographic breakdown of potential flu outbreaks, we use IP address information from our <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_faq.html#serverlogs">server logs</a> to make a best guess about where queries originate. To protect your privacy, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-step-to-protect-user-privacy.html">anonymize</a> those IP addresses at nine months. And we don't provide this aggregated, anonymized data to third parties. For more information about the privacy protections for Flu Trends check out our <a href="http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/faq.html">FAQs</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html">privacy policy</a>.<br /><br />This is just the first launch in what we hope will be several public service applications of Google Trends in the future. And as we continue to think of ways to use aggregated and anonymized search data in helpful ways, we're also committed to <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html">safeguarding</a> our users' privacy.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Pablo Chavez, Senior Policy Counsel</span>

How we help track flu trends

This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. -...

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New steps to protect free expression and privacy around the world

In a world where governments all too often censor what their citizens can see and do on the Internet, Google has from the start promoted global free expression and taken the lead in being transparent with our users. We've pressed governments around the world to stop limiting free speech and made it possible for dissidents, bloggers and others to have their voices heard.<br /><br />As part of those ongoing efforts to promote free expression and protect our users' privacy, today we're announcing Google's participation as a founding company member of a new program called the <a href="http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/">Global Network Initiative</a>.<br /><br />This initiative is the result of two years of discussions with other leading technology companies, human rights organizations, socially responsible investors and academic institutions. Thanks to hard work and cooperation from all parties, the Initiative sets the kinds of standards and practices that all companies and groups should use when governments threaten internationally recognized rights to free expression and privacy.<br /><br />The Global Network Initiative also offers an important commitment from all parties to take action together to promote free expression and protect privacy in the use of all information and communication technologies. We know that common action by these diverse groups is more likely to bring about change in government policies than the efforts of any one company or group acting alone.<br /><br />Companies that join the Initiative commit to putting into effect procedures that will protect their users by:<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Evaluating against international standards government requests to censor content or access user information</li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Providing greater transparency</li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Assessing human rights risks when entering new markets or introducing new products</li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Instituting employee training and oversight programs</li></ul><br />These are things that Google does now, but joining the Initiative will help us refine our methods and maintain our leadership position. Down the road companies will be assessed on how they're doing in implementing the principles and the Initiative will report those results.<br /><br />This Initiative is by no means a silver bullet or the last word, but it does represent a concrete step toward promoting freedom of expression and protecting users' privacy in the 60th anniversary year of the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/60UDHR.aspx">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>. Now we're actively recruiting more companies and groups to join the Initiative and advance these critical human rights around the world.<br /> <br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs</span></div>

New steps to protect free expression and privacy around the world

In a world where governments all too often censor what their citizens can see and do on the Internet, Google has from the start promoted glo...

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Online safety tips from Google and AARP

Now more than ever before, older Americans are logging on and surfing the web to stay in touch with family and friends, read websites and blogs, share photos, watch videos, and run online businesses. Like all Internet users, they're sometimes faced with unsafe activity online, such as viruses and malware, and they're looking for resources to learn how to keep their information on the web safe, private, and under their control.<br /><br />So we teamed up with <a href="http://www.aarp.org/">AARP</a> to launch a new video series that provides AARP members with helpful, easy-to-understand tips on how to stay safe online. It includes pointers on how to set privacy controls in online photo-sharing sites, configure firewalls to protect your computer, select safe and secure passwords for your online accounts, shop safely online, and avoid phishing scams. You can find the videos on AARP's <a href="http://www.aarp.org/onlinesafety">online safety page</a>, as well as on our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/googleprivacy">Privacy Channel</a> on YouTube.<br /><br />Here's a look at the first video, Safe Starts:<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cdO670FOmFM"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cdO670FOmFM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed> </object><br /><br />Our team gave a sneak peek of the videos from our booth at the annual AARP member event, <a href="http://www.aarp.org/aarp_benefits/natl_events/aarp_benefits/natl_events/dc/?type=party">Life@50+</a>, earlier this month. We received lots of great feedback from AARP members. Even the most computer-savvy members found the videos helpful, and most folks who stopped by were eager to share them with friends and family members who are just getting started online.<br /><br />Check out the rest of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E5469A21B9F9E466">online safety video series</a>. We hope the tips in these videos raise awareness among Internet users of all ages about how to stay safe online.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update (12:06 p.m.): </span>Nancy LeaMonde, AARP's Executive VP of Social Impact, just <a href="http://blog.aarp.org/shaarpsession/2008/09/nancy_leamond_enjoy_life_onlin.html">posted</a> tips from the video series on AARP's blog.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust and Safety</span>

Online safety tips from Google and AARP

Now more than ever before, older Americans are logging on and surfing the web to stay in touch with family and friends, read websites and bl...

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Ad perfect

<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" > The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors</span><br /><br />Google's advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is very similar to our mission in search, and, like our colleagues in search, those of us on the ads team are constantly striving to achieve better results. We have hundreds of thousands of advertisers who collectively have millions of products and services, and out of that vast amount of information our goal is always to show people the best ads, the ones that are the most relevant, timely, and useful (and, from the advertiser perspective, measurable). Achieving this ideal has been difficult since the early days of ads, but now, with the Internet, it is within reach.<br /><br />What does it take to do this? We need to understand exactly what people are looking for, then give them exactly the information they want. Timing is an important component. For example, when a person is looking for a specific item (like those table lamps I got a couple of weeks ago), the best ads will give more specific information, like where to buy the item online and locally, along with other relevant information such as style, size, availability, and pricing. Regardless of the timing, the best ads might include images, videos, or other formats about products and services to provide the most relevant information to people to make their purchasing decision.<br /><br />In other cases, ads can help you learn about something you didn’t know you wanted. For instance, a few weeks ago I was researching roller coasters for my son when I saw a great text ad for software that actually lets you design your own roller coaster! It turned out to be the perfect gift (and I now have a budding roller coaster engineer in my house). So in this case, I was doing some basic research, and the ad helped me discover something I didn't know existed.<br /><br />As we look forward, one way to make ads better would be to customize them based on factors like a person's location or preferences. If you're in a particular neighborhood using your mobile phone to look for a specific type of restaurant or shop, ads from local vendors are likely to be very useful to you.<br /><br />Finally, it is very important that anyone be able to advertise. People benefit when they see ads from any type of business or organization regardless of its size or geography. The right product for a user might be from a company they had previously never heard of, so it needs to be very easy and quick for anyone to create good ads, to show them only to people for whom they are useful, and to measure how effective they are.<br /><br />In <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-search.html" id="wy.e" title="Marissa's post">Marissa's post</a> on Wednesday, she talked about how the science of search is still in its infancy, and how we still have many breakthroughs before us. The same applies to advertising. In coming years, as people find new ways to use the Internet and new devices with which to access it, we have the opportunity to get even smarter about the ads we show. As always, we will use the best and most innovative technologies available so we serve relevant ads for you. We will do so in a way that safeguards user privacy by honoring our commitment to transparency and choice. And most importantly, we will continue to live by the philosophy that has guided our work from the outset: getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management</span></div>

Ad perfect

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has cha...

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Update to Google Suggest

There's been quite a bit of comment in the last few days about Google Suggest, particularly how it's used in Google Chrome. Google Suggest is actually built into a number of different products including Google Search, Google Toolbar, browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, and the Google Search application on the iPhone.<br /><br />But what is <a href="http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=106230&hl=en">Google Suggest</a>? It's a feature designed to make searching both faster and easier. Whether you are typing into the search box on Google Toolbar or Google.com, or the Omnibox in Google Chrome, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. So for example, if you type "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "prog," Google Suggest might offer you refinements such as "programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or "progressive." Again, these suggestions allow you to enter your searches faster, but also in a way that will more likely get you the results you're looking for.<br /><br />That's what occurs on the surface of Google Suggest. Here's what happens under the hood. To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.<br /><br />However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.<br /><br />All data retention is a balance between user privacy and trust on the one hand, and security and innovation on the other. In the case of Google Suggest we decided it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately. But in other cases - such as our core web search - storing data like IP addresses for a time is crucial to make <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/making-search-better-in-catalonia.html" target="_blank" title="improvements to search quality">improvements to search quality</a>, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-log-data-to-help-keep-you-safe.html" target="_blank" title="improve security">improve security</a>, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-data-to-help-prevent-fraud.html" target="_blank" title="fight fraud">fight fraud</a> and <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-data-to-fight-webspam.html" target="_blank" title="reduce spam">reduce spam</a>.<br /><br />You can read more about our privacy policies on the <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html" target="_blank" title="Google Privacy Center">Google Privacy Center</a>, check out the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLgJYBRzUXY" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank" title="Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple">Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple</a> video for more information about how our server logs work.<br /><br /><b><span style="font-style: italic;">Update</span> May 21, 2013: </b>We have updated our Autocomplete (formerly known as Suggest) and Instant logging policies. For the most recent information about these policies, see the <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/privacy/whitepaper.html">Chrome Privacy Whitepaper</a>.<br /><br /><b><span style="font-style: italic;">Update</span> October 5, 2010: </b>We launched Google Instant last month, and we now store Google Instant's partial query data for up to two weeks in unanonymized form, at which time we will delete 100 percent of it. These data retention changes apply only to queries made when Google Instant is active.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations</span>

Update to Google Suggest

There's been quite a bit of comment in the last few days about Google Suggest, particularly how it's used in Google Chrome. Google S...

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Another step to protect user privacy

Today, we're announcing a new logs retention policy: we'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months. We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users.<br /><br />Back in March 2007, Google became the first leading search engine to <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-to-further-improve-our.html" id="v087" title="announce">announce</a> a policy to anonymize our search server logs in the interests of privacy. And many others in the industry quickly followed our lead. Although that was good for privacy, it was a difficult decision because the routine server log data we collect has always been a critical ingredient of innovation. We have published a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-data-matters.html" id="ven6" title="series">series</a> of blog posts explaining how we use logs data for the benefit of our users: to make <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/making-search-better-in-catalonia.html" id="ixci" title="improvements to search quality">improvements to search quality</a>, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-log-data-to-help-keep-you-safe.html" id="pq9f" title="improve security">improve security</a>, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-data-to-help-prevent-fraud.html" id="d3kn" title="fight fraud">fight fraud</a> and <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-data-to-fight-webspam.html" id="vksr" title="reduce spam">reduce spam</a>. <br /><br />Over the last two years, policymakers and regulators -- especially in Europe and the U.S. -- have continued to ask us (and others in the industry) to explain and justify this shortened logs retention policy. We responded by <a href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/Google_response_Working_Party_06_2007.pdf" id="u8i6" title="open letter">open letter</a> to explain how we were trying to strike the right balance between sometimes conflicting factors like privacy, security, and innovation. Some in the community of EU data protection regulators continued to be skeptical of the legitimacy of logs retention and <a href="http://www.cbpweb.nl/downloads_int/Opinie%20WP29%20zoekmachines.pdf" id="gtak" title="demanded detailed justifications">demanded detailed justifications</a> for this retention. Many of these privacy leaders also highlighted the risks of litigants using court-ordered discovery to gain access to logs, as in the recent Viacom suit.<br /><br />Today, we are filing <a href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/Google_response_Working_Party_06_2007.pdf">this response</a> (PDF file) to the EU privacy regulators. Since we announced our original logs anonymization policy, we have had literally hundreds of discussions with data protection officials, government leaders and privacy advocates around the world to explain our privacy practices and to work together to develop ways to improve privacy. When we began anonymizing after 18 months, we knew it meant sacrifices in future innovations in all of these areas. We believed further reducing the period before anonymizing would degrade the utility of the data too much and outweigh the incremental privacy benefit for users.<br /><br />We didn't stop working on this computer science problem, though. The problem is difficult to solve because the characteristics of the data that make it useful to prevent fraud, for example, are the very characteristics that also introduce some privacy risk. After months of work our engineers developed methods for preserving more of the data's utility while also anonymizing IP addresses sooner. We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work.<br /><br />While we're glad that this will bring some additional improvement in privacy, we're also concerned about the potential loss of security, quality, and innovation that may result from having less data. As the period prior to anonymization gets shorter, the added privacy benefits are less significant and the utility lost from the data grows. So, it's difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other. Technology will certainly evolve, and we will always be working on ways to improve privacy for our users, seeking new innovations, and also finding the right balance between the benefits of data and advancement of privacy.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel; Jane Horvath, Senior Privacy Counsel; and Alma Whitten, Software Engineer</span>

Another step to protect user privacy

Today, we're announcing a new logs retention policy: we'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months. We're signi...

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Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

Whenever we release a product in beta as we just did with <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" target="_blank" title="Google Chrome">Google Chrome</a>, we can always count on our users to come up with ways to improve it. This week's example: several eagle-eyed <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10030522-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0" target="_blank" title="users">users</a> and <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_google_have_rights_to_all.php" target="_blank" title="bloggers">bloggers</a> have expressed concern that Section 11 of <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html" target="_blank" title="Google Chrome's terms of service">Google Chrome's terms of service</a> attempts to give us rights to any user-generated content "submitted, posted or displayed on or through" the browser.<br /><br />You'll notice if you look at our other products that many of them are governed by Section 11 of our <a href="http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS" target="_blank" title="Universal Terms of Service">Universal Terms of Service</a>. This section is included because, under copyright law, Google needs what's called a "license" to display or transmit content. So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog's content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service. In Gmail, for example, the terms specifically disclaim our ownership right to Gmail content.<br /><br />So for Google Chrome, only the first sentence of Section 11 should have applied. We're sorry we overlooked this, but we've fixed it now, and you can read the <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html" id="so6v" target="_blank" title="updated Google Chrome terms of service">updated</a> Google Chrome terms of service. If you're into the fine print, here's the revised text of Section 11:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="font-family: courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">11. Content license from you</span><br />11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.</blockquote>And that's all. Period. End of section.<br /><br />It will take a little time to propagate this change through the 40+ languages in which Google Chrome is available, and to remove the language in the download versions. But rest assured that we're working quickly to fix this. The new terms will of course be retroactive, and will cover everyone who has downloaded Google Chrome since it was launched.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel</span>

Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

Whenever we release a product in beta as we just did with Google Chrome , we can always count on our users to come up with ways to improve i...

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New enhancements on the Google content network

Today we're announcing some key enhancements on the Google content network (partner sites for which we provide advertising) that will offer a better experience for users and better value for advertisers and publishers. These enhancements are the latest result of our integration with DoubleClick and our commitment to making advertising on the Google content network more efficient and accountable. When we purchased DoubleClick, we talked about how we would empower agencies, advertisers and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, and provide a better experience for our users. We are happy that we have been able to deliver on this promise already, like <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/opening-our-content-network-to-third.html" id="ddz7" title="Opening our content network to third parties">support for third party vendors</a> on the Google content network.<br /><br />The new enhancements that we are announcing today and that will be available in the coming months are the next step in our integration and in enabling standard industry functionality on the Google content network:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Frequency Capping:</span> Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again. </li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Frequency Reporting:</span> Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads. </li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Improved Ads Quality:</span> Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">View-Through Conversions</span>: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.</li></ul>We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. Using the DoubleClick cookie means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers don't have to make any changes on their websites as we continue our integration efforts and offer additional enhancements. This also means that with one click, users can <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html" id="d:.r" title="opt out">opt out</a> of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network. (If a user has already opted out of the DoubleClick cookie, that opt-out will also automatically apply to the Google content network.)<br /><br />To learn more, you can check out our updated <a href="http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html"> main privacy policy </a> and a new <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_cookies.html" id="mvt3">advertising-specific privacy policy</a> that reflects our integration with the DoubleClick ad serving cookie, and you can visit a <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html" id="og98">section</a> in our <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html">Privacy Center</a> devoted to advertising and privacy.<br /><br />We're excited about our integration of DoubleClick and the improvements we're making to the Google content network. And I am personally excited about seeing more relevant ads, especially if I don't have to see the same ads over and over!<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Rajas Moonka, Senior Business Product Manager</span>

New enhancements on the Google content network

Today we're announcing some key enhancements on the Google content network (partner sites for which we provide advertising) that will of...

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What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience</span><br /><br />Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a number ("37") in the subject - and no message text. What a weird form of spam, I thought. Why would anyone be motivated to just send a number? I searched for the user's email address to see what else had been sent. Interesting. Lots of numbers: 33, 53, and then a clue: "61, getting a bit heavy, aren't we?" Furthermore, the date on each of the messages seemed very familiar. Then I realized that's because the dates were all days that I had launched various changes on the homepage. "Getting a bit heavy?" - that one did correspond to one of the wordiest homepage releases we had ever done. Could the sender be counting words? Sure enough, I looked back, counted the words myself, and he was - a manual, human version of a scale for the Google homepage. He was weighing our homepage and letting us know when it was getting too heavy. One of his earliest mails had a note in the body: "What happened to the days of 13?" - referring to the word count on the initial 1999 homepage.<br /><br />This mystery and its revelation was really interesting because I thought about the homepage, and how to keep it simple, all the time. Yet I hadn't thought to look at it through this very simple lens: just count the words. The fewer, the better. Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That's the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there's no promotional line running beneath the search box, you've set Google as your homepage and thus don't get the "Make Google Your Homepage!" link, and you count "©2008 Google" as two words.)<br /><br />So, today we're making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users' privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new "Privacy" link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won't, do in regard to your personal information.<br /><br />How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the "weight" of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word "Google" (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600-h/blogpost.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218887618314035170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600/blogpost.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 0px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />We think the easy access to our privacy information without any added homepage heft is a clear win for our users and an enhancement to your experience. You can <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html" id="dvb2" title="check out the new Privacy Center here">check out the new Privacy Center here</a>.

What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user suppor...

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Using data to fight webspam

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Matt Cutts, Software Engineer</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This post is the latest in an ongoing <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/making-search-better-in-catalonia.html">series</a> about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed.</span><br /><br />As the head of the webspam team at Google, I'm in charge of making sure your search results are as relevant and informative as possible. Webspam, in case you've never heard of it, is the junk you see in search results when websites successfully cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality" id="jelw" title="search engine quality guidelines">search engine quality guidelines</a>. If you've never seen webspam, here's a good example <span style="font-size:100%;">of what you might see if you click on a link in the search results that's spam (click on the image to see it larger).<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDPtpF3pioH-F9uZ0T1FNpHd9vpdifV0E9j_buoKVuQy2DkskJB3ZqxAubtEXLj4oq-N0iUBdjTpYtADO0r91gS3W8FeHfQR7B9-ZAmbbNbo1YezDiV6o_5KbeRuxeUC8_3hYIEaMj3uw/s1600-h/webspam.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216926735305016946" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDPtpF3pioH-F9uZ0T1FNpHd9vpdifV0E9j_buoKVuQy2DkskJB3ZqxAubtEXLj4oq-N0iUBdjTpYtADO0r91gS3W8FeHfQR7B9-ZAmbbNbo1YezDiV6o_5KbeRuxeUC8_3hYIEaMj3uw/s320/webspam.gif" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">You can see how unhelpful such a page would be. This example is filled with almost no original content, irrelevant links, and information that is of little use to a user. We work hard to ensure you rarely see search results like this. Imagine how annoyed you would be if you clicked on a link from a Google search result and ended up on a page like this.<br /><br />Searchers don't often see blatant, outright spam like this in search results today. But webspam was much more of an issue before Google became popular and before we were able to build effective anti-spam methods. In general, webspam can be a real annoyance, such as when a search on your own name returns links to porn pages as results. But for many searches, where getting relevant information is more critical, spam is a serious problem. For example, a search for <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=prostate+cancer" id="n.y3" title="prostate cancer">prostate cancer</a> that's full of spam instead of relevant links greatly diminishes the value of a search engine as a helpful tool.<br /><br />Data from search logs is one tool we use to fight webspam and return cleaner and more relevant results. Logs data such as IP address and cookie information make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different aspects of our search quality (such as index size and coverage, results "freshness," and spam).<br /><br />Whenever we create a new metric, it's essential to be able to go over our logs data and compute new spam metrics using previous queries or results. We use our search logs to go "back in time" and see how well Google did on queries from months before. When we create a metric that measures a new type of spam more accurately, we not only start tracking our spam success going forward, but we also use logs data to see how we were doing on that type of spam in previous months and years.<br /><br />The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant.<br /><br />If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2188281,00.asp" id="nkze" title="misspellings and porn phrases">misspellings and porn phrases</a>. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack.<br /><br />In an ideal world, the vast majority of our users wouldn't even need to know that Google has a webspam team. If we do our job well, you may see low-quality results from time to time, but you won't have to face sneaky JavaScript redirects, unwanted porn, gibberish-stuffed pages or other types of webspam. Our logs data helps ensure that Google detects and has a chance to counteract new spam trends before it lowers the quality of your search experience.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update:</span> Enlarged image.</span><br /></div></div>

Using data to fight webspam

Posted by Matt Cutts, Software Engineer This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve ou...

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Does your password pass the test?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by HongHai Shen, Engineer</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This post is the latest in an ongoing </span><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/security" id="tkbs" style="font-style: italic;" title="series">series</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> about online safety. - Ed.</span><br /><br />One of the things I work on is password security. And because I'm someone who pays close attention to passwords and how people use them, I sometimes hear interesting stories. For example, a couple of my colleagues are so careful about the security of their passwords that they generate a random eight-character string, memorize it, and then use it as their password for two to three months. After that time elapses, they start the process over again and generate a new random password.<br /><br />Do we all need to be that careful about our passwords? Probably not. But passwords are one of the web's most important security tools. Whether it's for your Google account, your banking center, or your favorite store, choosing a good password and keeping it safe can go a long way toward protecting your information online.<br /><br />So how do you choose a good password, and then keep it safe? A few of these tips can help:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Avoid common elements when choosing your password.</span> Specifically, you should avoid using words or phases from the dictionary, especially things that are easy to guess, like "password," "let me in," or the name of the site you're logging into. You should also avoid using keyboard patterns, such as "asdf1234" or "aqswdefr," or personal information, such as birthdays, addresses, or phone numbers.</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Make your password as unique as possible. </span>Once you've settled on a good base for your password, you should go a step further and add in numbers and non-alphanumerical characters, mix in upper-case letters, or use similar-looking substitutions for parts of the password, such as "$" for "s," "1" for "l," and "0" for "o."</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Create different passwords for different sites.</span> Doing so will help ensure that if one password is compromised, the others will remain secure. You may not be able to have a unique password for every place you visit on the web (for some of us, that would be a lot of passwords to manage), but alternating between a set of different passwords across the web and making sure all accounts that contain highly sensitive information (like email accounts or online banking accounts) have unique passwords is a good place to start.</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't share your passwords with anyone.</span> Not family, not friends, not anyone. This may seem a little strict, but the reality is the more people you share your password with, the greater your chances of having that password compromised will be. Also, if you need to write your passwords down, keep them away from your computer, and never send them in emails. And if you suspect someone might have discovered one of your passwords, change it immediately. </li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be careful how you share your information online.</span> Some online services -- such as social networking sites and gadgets that scrape information from other products -- may ask you for a password or an API key. If you choose to use these kinds of services, take a few minutes to learn more about what they do to keep your sensitive information secure. And just like sharing passwords with other people, you should be aware that sharing this information increases the chances that it could be compromised.</li></ul>Another thing that can help keep your password secure is choosing a good security question and answer on the sites that offer that option. You've probably seen this before: When you're creating an account on many sites, you will be asked to choose a question to verify your identity if you forget your password.<br /><br />Some sites will let you write in your own question; in these cases, you should make sure the Q&A you create isn't something that's easy to guess or something that your family and friends would know. Other sites will present you with a list of preset questions to choose from, such as "What is your mother's maiden name?" These kinds of questions are less secure, as they're easier for other people to guess the answer. In these cases, you should find a way to make your answer unique -- whether it's using the tips above, or by adding in other information -- so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won't know how to enter it properly.<br /><br /><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=29409">Read more</a> about choosing a good password and security question.

Does your password pass the test?

Posted by HongHai Shen, Engineer This post is the latest in an ongoing series about online safety. - Ed. One of the things I work on is pas...

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