About the Copiepresse decision

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs</span><br /><br />Today we heard that the Belgian court, which last year ruled against us in the Copiepresse case has reaffirmed its original decision. This judgment is clearly disappointing, and we intend to appeal it because we believe that Google.be and Google News are entirely legal and provide great value and critical information to Internet users. However, we are very pleased that the judge agreed Google should be given notice of articles and other material that content owners want removed. As we have in the past, we will honor all requests to remove such materials.<br /><br />It is important to remember that both Google Web Search and Google News only ever show a few snippets of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the web publisher's site where the information resides.<br /><br />Here's a quick summary of the case: Copiepresse represents a number of newspapers in Belgium. It sued Google last August claiming that our search engine and news site breached these publications' copyright. <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/about-google-news-case-in-belgium.html">In September</a>, the court ruled in favor of Copiepresse, ordering us to remove these publishers' content from both Google.be and Google News. We complied with that order and also posted the ruling to both home pages.<br /><br />Today's ruling does not affect the current content of Google News because the websites represented by Copiepresse have already been removed from Google News. In fact, hundreds of news publishers in Belgium and around the world are delighted to be included in Google News because it helps more people find their websites and read their articles. That's why Google receives far more requests for inclusion than requests for removal.<br /><br />We believe search engines are of real benefit to publishers because they drive valuable traffic to their websites. If publishers do not want their websites to appear in search results, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/controlling-how-search-engines-access.html">technical standards like robots.txt and metatags</a> enable them automatically to prevent the indexation of their content. These Internet standards are nearly universally accepted and are honored by all reputable search engines. In addition, Google has a clear policy of respecting the wishes of content owners. If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News, we remove their content from our index—all the newspaper has to do is ask. There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs.

About the Copiepresse decision

Posted by Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs Today we heard that the Belgian court, which last year ru...

Đọc thêm »

Happy V-Day...Fido?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Tom Oliveri, Group Product Marketing Manager, Checkout Team</span><br /><br />One of the things I love most about Google is that I get to learn little bits about human nature all the time. This Valentine's Day, the Checkout team wanted to better understand the habits of V-Day shoppers, so we worked with Harris Interactive to conduct a survey with a variety of folks. We found out all sorts of interesting things about the nature of the holiday, what people like to shop for, and who people shop for -- for instance, this year, the family dog is more likely to get a little something for V-Day than Dad is. <br /><br />There's plenty more where that came from, and the findings might interest you. <a href="http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/02/for-those-special-someones.html">Read more on the Checkout blog</a>.

Happy V-Day...Fido?

Posted by Tom Oliveri, Group Product Marketing Manager, Checkout Team One of the things I love most about Google is that I get to learn litt...

Đọc thêm »

Congratulations are in order

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering</span><br /><br />I'm delighted to congratulate <a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/alon/">Alon Halevy</a> and <a href="http://norvig.com/">Peter Norvig</a>, two Googlers who have been selected for the <a href="http://fellows.acm.org/">2006 class of ACM Fellows</a>.<br /><br />This is a great honor, and a recognition of extraordinary contributions to the computing community. Peter, who was our first director of search quality and is currently director of Google Research, has been recognized for his many contributions to the disciplines of artificial intelligence and information retrieval. Alon, who recently joined us from the University of Washington and now leads one of our structured data initiatives, has been honored for his contributions in data integration and knowledge representation.<br /><br />We'd like to thank each of them along with the other ACM Fellows for their hard work and innovative thinking. In many ways, these distinguished scientists and engineers have helped shape computing into something that affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people. They've also raised the bar on what it means to be a great computer scientist or a great engineer, which makes our work that much more interesting.

Congratulations are in order

Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering I'm delighted to congratulate Alon Halevy and Peter Norvig , two Googlers who have been ...

Đọc thêm »

Voulez-vous...collaborate...avec moi ce soir?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Kevin Systrom, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />For those of you who don't speak French: I don't either. But that's OK, because as I was writing this post in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, I simply added my French-speaking friend Nick, who confirmed that my two years of high-school French have not paid off. The title aside, we wanted to let you know that Google Docs & Spreadsheets, our handy online document and spreadsheet editor, now comes in 12 more languages. That's 11 if you don't count <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Den_GB&hl=en_GB<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=en_GB-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=en_GB">English</a> for the UK, where the only difference is the word 'color' (colour).<br /><br />The other languages we've added are: <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dfr&hl=fr<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=fr-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=fr">French</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dit&hl=it<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=it-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=it">Italian</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dde&hl=de<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=de-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=de">German</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Des&hl=es<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=es-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=es">Spanish</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dzh_TW&hl=zh_TW<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=zh_TW-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=zh_TW">Traditional Chinese</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dzh_CN&hl=zh_CN<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=zh_CN-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=zh_CN">Simplified Chinese</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dko&hl=ko<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=ko-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=ko">Korean</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dtr&hl=tr<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=tr-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=tr">Turkish</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dpl&hl=pl<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=pl-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=pl">Polish</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dnl&hl=nl<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=nl-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=nl">Dutch</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dpt_BR&hl=pt_BR<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=pt_BR-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=pt_BR">Portuguese (Brazil)</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Dru&hl=ru<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=ru-more&utm-medium=more&utm-campaign=ru">Russian</a>. If your favorite language isn't listed here, we've got an additional 18 languages in our spell-checker. Visit <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Den&hl=en<mpl=homepage&nui=1&utm-source=en-gblog&utm-medium=gblog&utm-campaign=en">docs.google.com</a> to try it out.<br /><br />There's more: Google Toolbar 3 for Firefox is now out of beta and available in all the same languages. In this new version, you can open your documents and spreadsheets directly in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. <a href="http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/">Give it a try</a>.

Voulez-vous...collaborate...avec moi ce soir?

Posted by Kevin Systrom, Associate Product Marketing Manager For those of you who don't speak French: I don't either. But that's...

Đọc thêm »

Who links to your site?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by By Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, Webmaster Central</span><br /><br />At <a title="webmaster central" href="http://www.google.com/webmasters">Webmaster Central</a>, we are all about communicating with webmasters about their sites in the Google index. We want to provide as much information as we can to help webmasters understand how their sites perform and how to improve their results. And we want to get input from the site owners, who after all know their sites best. We spend a lot of time talking with, and getting feedback from, webmasters. One request we hear a lot is to show which pages link to a site. You could always get a sub-sampled list of backlinks by using the <span style="font-family:Courier New;">link: operator</span>, but now, as the owner of a site, you can get a much larger list in the <a title="webmaster tools" href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools">Webmaster Tools</a> component of Webmaster Central.<br /><br />Head on over to <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/02/discover-your-links.html">this post</a> on our Webmaster Central blog for all the details, and then log into Webmaster tools to see what sites link to you. We hope this gives you greater insight about your visitor traffic as well as how your site is linked throughout the web.

Who links to your site?

Posted by By Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, Webmaster Central At Webmaster Central , we are all about communicating with webmasters about the...

Đọc thêm »

Google Maps down under

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Noel Gordon, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />Many Australians have used our maps and satellite images, so today we're especially excited to launch <a title="Google Maps Australia" href="http://maps.google.com.au/">Google Maps Australia</a>. We've expanded service to include Australian business listings, driving directions, and support for Google Mobile Maps in Australia.<br /><br />The next time you're looking for an <a title="address" href="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=1+Martin+Place,+Sydney+NSW+2000">address</a>, <a title="tiger meat pie in Sydney" href="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=tiger+meat+pie+sydney">tiger meat pie in Sydney</a>, <a title="cafes in Melbourne" href="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=cafes+melbourne">cafes in Melbourne</a>, or how to <a title="get to the beach" href="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?saddr=sydney&daddr=bondi+beach">get to the beach</a>, Google Maps can help you find the answer. If you're at your computer, go to <a href="http://maps.google.com.au/">http://maps.google.com.au</a> and start searching -- you can type addresses or business searches like [<a title="cricket near melbourne" href="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=cricket+near+melbourne">cricket near melbourne</a>] all into the same search box. If you want to access Google Maps on your mobile device, go to <a href="http://www.google.com/gmm">http://www.google.com/gmm</a> from your Java- enabled phone or Palm device to get started.<br /><br />A good part of the Google Maps team works out of our Sydney R&D center, and we're really pleased to offer the full functionality of Google Maps to everyone down under. Please <a href="http://maps.google.com.au/support/bin/request.py">let us know what you think</a>!

Google Maps down under

Posted by Noel Gordon, Software Engineer Many Australians have used our maps and satellite images, so today we're especially excited to ...

Đọc thêm »

Web APIs, web mashups and accessibility

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup">Wikipedia defines mashup</a> in the context of web applications as a "(web application hybrid), a website or web application that combines content from more than one source."<br /><br />More generally, web mashups are created by leveraging web APIs to present data in new and innovative ways—often, such innovation comes about by combining data from a multiplicity of sources. However, notice that combining multiple data sources into new and innovative views is not the only possible use of web APIs; in particular, you can also leverage these APIs to produce alternative views of a given data source. Newer uses of web APIs such as those provided by Google Maps, Google Calendar or Google Search often fall into this category of providing convenient user access. Thus, it is possible to embed a Google Calendar or the map for a given location into one's website.<br /><br />Moving from the above scenario to leveraging web APIs in the context of mashups for enabling better accessibility is but one step away. As an example, envision a very basic Google Maps mashup that embeds a map on a web page—but with zoom level set to twice the normal default. This might make a very interesting starting point for a low-vision user. Given the expressiveness of web APIs, we can go a lot further. I believe web mashups provide a very rich platform for building creative accessibility solutions with the goals of:<br /><ul><li>Providing the ability to build highly optimized custom views for cases where a "one size fits all" solution does not work </li><li>Experimenting with different accessibility approaches to discover solutions that work for inclusion into the mainstream </li></ul>To get a sense of what is possible, see how other web developers are leveraging these APIs to provide innovative access solutions. As an example of what can be done with GData-based APIs provided by applications like Google Calendar and friends, see this trip report—<a title="http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2007/01/mashup-camp-3-googlers-experience.html" href="http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2007/01/mashup-camp-3-googlers-experience.html">Mashup Camp 3 - A Googler's Experience</a>. In particular, notice <a title="http://www.robocal.com/" href="http://www.robocal.com/">RoboCal</a> a mashup that provides spoken access to your calendar.

Web APIs, web mashups and accessibility

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as...

Đọc thêm »