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Google Apps Partner Edition

Posted by Hunter Middleton, Product Manager From the beginning, we envisioned making <a href="http://google.com/a">Google Apps</a> available to any organization that might want to offer this innovative set of services to its employees, customers, students, members, or any other associates of the organization. Today, we're excited to take another step in that direction by releasing a version of Google Apps specifically designed for ISPs, portals, and other service providers, whether you have a few thousand subscribers or over a million. This new version, which we're calling the <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/partner_edition.html">Partner Edition</a>, makes it easy for large and small service providers to offer your subscribers the latest versions of powerful tools, like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, without having to worry about hosting, updating, or maintaining any of the services yourself. All you have to do is point and click in the easy admin control panel and figure out what branding you'd like to layer on top of the products in order to create a customized look and feel. You can quit spending your resources and time on applications like webmail -- and leave the work to our busy bees at the Googleplex.

Google Apps Partner Edition

Posted by Hunter Middleton, Product Manager From the beginning, we envisioned making Google Apps available to any organization that might w...

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Google Book Search becomes more comprehensive

Posted by Adam Mathes, Product Manager, Book Search <a href="http://books.google.com/"> Google Book Search</a> allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digitized books, but we thought that wasn't quite enough. Now when you search you'll get both digitized book results as well as records for millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world. When you view these new added book records, you can often read reviews, a summary, or see what other people had to say about the book around the web. Since these books haven't been digitally indexed yet, you can't preview the text online, but if you've discovered something great, we offer links to buy the book or <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/finding-wealth-in-your-library-and.html">find it in a library near you</a>. We're doing this because we want to offer users the most comprehensive book search in the world - whether it's a book you can <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cyokAAAAMAAJ&pg=PPA7">read online now</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dO-sDl1ySHoC&printsec=frontcover">preview samples</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=HbwYAAAAMAAJ&dq=paul+otlet&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;q=documentation&pgis=1">see a few snippets</a>, or just read what <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0783556756">others have written</a> about the book. We're still very busy digitizing millions more books, but want to make as much discoverable as possible today. To find out more, check out our post on <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/05/found-more-books.html">Inside Google Book Search</a>.

Google Book Search becomes more comprehensive

Posted by Adam Mathes, Product Manager, Book Search Google Book Search allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digit...

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Oh, the places you'll go....

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software Engineer, Picasa Web Albums If all you ever wanted to do is direct, now's your chance. You can use our free photo sharing service, <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com">Picasa Web Albums</a>, to create nifty portable Flash slideshows that you can easily embed in any blog or web page. Check out this slideshow of our new Hollywood-themed office in Santa Monica. <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host= picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Ftester%2Falbumid%2F5061951474333359457%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss%26authkey%3D3V8IljiqEO0" pluginspage=" http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="192" width="288"></embed> The playback controls are built right in -- just roll over the slideshow to reveal them -- and it just takes a quick click for friends to get started on creating their own masterpiece.

Oh, the places you'll go....

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software Engineer, Picasa Web Albums If all you ever wanted to do is direct, now's your chance. You can use our ...

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Behind the scenes with universal search

Posted by David Bailey, Tech Lead, and Johanna Wright, Product Manager, universal search So when we were asked to make the vision <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/universal-search-best-answer-is-still.html">Marissa describes</a> about universal search into a reality, we admit we were a little daunted. Googlers had tried before to do this without success -- several times. Finding the best answer across multiple content types is a well-known hard problem in the search field. Besides that, we wondered if we had become too big a company to pull off a project this complex. Here's the challenge in a nutshell: Until now, we've only been able to show news, books, local and other such results at the top of the page, like this example for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trends+in+education+&btnG=Google+Search">trends in education</a>]. But it's a tall order to earn placement at the top of our search results, so plenty often we end up not showing these kinds of results even when they might be useful. If only we could smartly place such results elsewhere on the page when they don't quite deserve the top, we could share the benefits of these great Google features with people much more often. One challenge was being able to regularly search through all of the additional content types to find relevant results. After all, you don't know if there might be a minor news story or an obscure book relevant to your query unless you go and check. But Google's massive compute cluster -- and much effort by our infrastructure experts -- gave us a leg up on that one, and we can now search these disparate types of information about as efficiently as we search our massive index of web pages. We may have melted down a data center or two along the way, but then bugs are part of life in this business! The next challenge was deciding when and where such results should blend in. Fortunately we have some of the world's experts on ranking, and have been able to apply the lessons learned on web search to ensure that we show news only for newsworthy queries, scanned books only when there aren't better web results, etc. It can be tricky. As we learned the hard way, just because everyone under the sun is writing about Anna Nicole Smith doesn't mean news about her should show up for the search [baby names]. Lastly, we faced the challenge of the user interface you see on the screen -- the UI. The new UI for these results is subtle, but this is one reason why the project is fun for our designers and usability experts: they get to focus on creating a simple experience for you. For example, with news results they designed a compact look for the result that includes helpful items like an image and a date, but is limited to just the most salient information. Or take our book search results, which call out the author and number of pages in the book. (Of course, we learned that sometimes you don't even need to design a user interface. In one early usability study, shortly after Barry Bonds broke Babe Ruth's home run record, we asked people "how many home runs has Barry Bonds hit?" hoping they would type [barry bonds] into the search box. Instead, each and every one simply blurted out "715".) We also called on experts from each of our feature areas such as News and Local, and were delighted to find our startup mindset is alive and well. Folks from all over found spare time and pitched in to get us to the finish line. There were many nights when we went to bed knowing that plenty of the team's IM status still reported they were online. And after all this elbow grease, finally we have something that works. What does it mean for you? Although it's just a beginning, this first pass of universal search focuses on video, news, local and books. Now you'll be able to get more information Google knows about directly from within the search results. You won't have to know about specialized areas of content. If you're looking for the [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=atkins+southwestern+pork+fajitas&btnG=Search">atkins southwestern pork fajitas</a>] recipe, we can now link you right to that page in the book. Or if, like me, you've been busy these past few days and have not caught up with your Tivo, don't type [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sopranos&btnG=Search">sopranos</a>] into Google, because our news result will be a giant spoiler. The search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?aq=t&oq=rachmaninoff+concerto+&hl=en&q=rachmaninoff+concerto+3">rachmaninoff concerto 3</a>] includes a video of Vladimir Horowitz performing this piece (scroll down to see it), and [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Animator+vs.+Animation+2&btnG=Search">Animator vs. Animation 2</a>] is pretty cool as well. (And as Johanna notes: I was delighted to see that when querying for my son's name a video showed up too.) This is just the tip of the iceberg in making Google results more comprehensive and useful. It has involved launching a number of new systems that will make it much easier for us to continue making improvements so you get the most relevant information from our varied content areas. We hope you like it. And finally, we're especially happy to know that Google is still very much a place where we can get big things done!

Behind the scenes with universal search

Posted by David Bailey, Tech Lead, and Johanna Wright, Product Manager, universal search So when we were asked to make the vision Marissa de...

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Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few "splashy" ideas in search. A designer and product manager at the time, I made a few mockups -- one of which was for 'universal search.' It was a sample search results page for Britney Spears that, in addition to web results, also had news, images, and groups results right on the same page. Even then, we could see that people could easily become overwhelmed with the number of different search tools available on Google -- let alone those that would be created over the next few years. This proliferation of tools, while useful, has outgrown the old model of search. We want to help you find the very best answer, even if you don't know where to look. That mockup and early observations were the motivation behind the universal search effort we announced earlier today. And while that Britney Spears mockup was the start of Google's universal search vision, it was instantly obvious that this would be one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges we would face at Google. Over several years, with the help of more than 100 people, we've built the infrastructure, search algorithms, and presentation mechanisms to provide what we see as just the first step in the evolution toward universal search. Today, we're making that first step available on google.com by launching the new architecture and using it to blend content from Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into our web results. With universal search, we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results. Here are a few of my favorite searches that show off the power of universal search: <ul><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+steve+jobs&btnG=Search">steve jobs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=darth+vader&btnG=Search">darth vader</a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nosferatu&btnG=Search">nosferatu</a></li></ul>In addition, we've rolled out a few new navigation elements and experimental features to help our users better navigate our site and find the information they're looking for. These include contextual navigation links above the search results that help users "drill down" to specific types of information. For instance, developers who search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=python&btnG=Search">python</a>] will see links for "web," "blogs," "books," "groups," and "code," whereas [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=downtown+los+angeles&btnG=Search">downtown los angeles</a>] will show a different set of links. Also, in terms of integration and navigation, today we introduced a new universal navigation bar at the top of all Google web pages to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Gmail. While today's releases are big steps in making the world's information more easily accessible, these are just the beginning steps toward the universal search vision. Stay tuned!

Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few "splashy" ide...

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Why does Google remember information about searches?

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel We recently <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-to-further-improve-our.html">announced a new policy</a> to anonymize our server logs after 18–24 months. We’re the only leading search company to have taken this step publicly. We believe it’s an important part of our commitment to respect user privacy while balancing a number of important factors. In developing this policy, we spoke with various privacy advocates, regulators and others about how long they think the period should be. There is a wide spectrum of views on this – some think data should be preserved for longer, others think it should be anonymized almost immediately. We spent a great deal of time sorting this out and thought we’d explain some of the things that prompted us to decide on 18-24 months. Three factors were critical. One was maintaining our ability to continue to improve the quality of our search services. Another was to protect our systems and our users from fraud and abuse. The third was complying—and anticipating compliance—with possible data retention requirements. Here’s a bit more about each of these: <ul><li>Improve our services: Search companies like Google are constantly trying to improve the quality of their search services. Analyzing logs data is an important tool to help our engineers refine search quality and build helpful new services. Take the example of Google Spell Checker. Google’s spell checking software automatically looks at your query and checks to see if you are using the most common version of a word’s spelling. If it calculates that you’re likely to generate more relevant search results with an alternative spelling, it will ask “Did you mean: (more common spelling)?” We can offer this service by looking at spelling corrections that people do or do not click on. Similarly, with logs, we can improve our search results: if we know that people are clicking on the #1 result we’re doing something right, and if they’re hitting next page or reformulating their query, we’re doing something wrong. The ability of a search company to continue to improve its services is essential, and represents a normal and expected use of such data.</li></ul><ul><li>Maintain security and prevent fraud and abuse: It is standard among Internet companies to retain server logs with IP addresses as one of an array of tools to protect the system from security attacks. For example, our computers can analyze logging patterns in order to identify, investigate and defend against malicious access and exploitation attempts. Data protection laws around the world require Internet companies to maintain adequate security measures to protect the personal data of their users. Immediate deletion of IP addresses from our logs would make our systems more vulnerable to security attacks, putting the personal data of our users at greater risk. Historical logs information can also be a useful tool to help us detect and prevent phishing, scripting attacks, and spam, including query click spam and ads click spam.</li></ul><ul><li>Comply with legal obligations to retain data: Search companies like Google are also subject to laws that sometimes conflict with data protection regulations, like data retention for law enforcement purposes. For example, Google may be subject to the EU Data Retention Directive, which was passed last year, in the wake of the Madrid and London terrorist bombings, to help law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of “serious crime”. The Directive requires all EU Member States to pass data retention laws by 2009 with retention for periods between 6 and 24 months. Since these laws do not yet exist, and are only now being <a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/intl/data_retention.html">proposed and debated</a>, it is too early to know the final retention time periods, the jurisdictional impact, and the scope of applicability. It's therefore too early to state whether such laws would apply to particular Google services, and if so, which ones. In the U.S., the Department of Justice and others have similarly called for <a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/intl/data_retention.html">24-month data retention laws</a>.</li></ul>At the same time, regulators in other parts of governments have argued for shorter retention periods, reflecting the conflicts in every country between privacy and data protection objectives on the one hand, and law enforcement objectives on the other. Companies like Google are trying to be responsible corporate citizens, and sometimes we are told to do different things by different government entities, or to follow conflicting legal obligations. It's hard enough to get different government entities to talk to each other inside one country. When you multiply this by all the countries where Google must comply with the laws, the potential conflicts are enormous. Nonetheless, Google is committed to providing its users around the world with one consistent high level of data protection. It’s also worth reiterating that we do not ask our users for their names, address, or phone numbers to use most of our services. For those who want to see what their logs history looks like, we offer transparent access via a Google Account to their own personal <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?hl=en&continue=http://www.google.com/history/%3Fzx%3DFhAUmYIBL0U&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nui=1&ltmpl=reauth&service=hist&srr=1">Web History</a>. Finally, we maintain rigorous internal controls of our logs database. We look forward to an ongoing discussion with privacy stakeholders around the world as we pursue a common goal of improving privacy protections for everyone on the Internet.

Why does Google remember information about searches?

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel We recently announced a new policy to anonymize our server logs after 18–24 months. We’re...

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A whole new experience for Google Analytics

Posted by Jeff Veen, UI Design Manager A year and a half ago, we released Google Analytics as a free service to help people measure the success of their Web sites. In that time, the response has been fantastic - hundreds of thousands of sites across the Web have access to this powerful analysis previously only available to the enterprise. Now, we're taking the next step: making that analysis even more accessible and easy to use. Today we're announcing a complete redesign of <a href="http://analytics.google.com/">Google Analytics</a>. We started over a year ago with dozens of interviews with power users, those new to analytics, and everyone in between. They told us they needed their data organized in a more intuitive way. They wanted to be able to see traffic trends in context with more explanation of what the numbers mean. And they needed tools to help them communicate what they'd found with others. This research fed months of development and design iteration to create a totally new user experience. We've been working on this since I blogged about <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/here-comes-measure-map.html">the Measure Map acquisition</a>. Since then, we've collaborated with the combined team from Google and <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/circle-of-analytics.html">Urchin Software</a> to bring user-centered design to their strong development skills. I couldn't be more pleased with the results. You can find out more at the <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-version-of-google-analytics.html">Google Analytics Blog</a> and be sure to check out <a href="http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html">this demo</a> for more details.

A whole new experience for Google Analytics

Posted by Jeff Veen, UI Design Manager A year and a half ago, we released Google Analytics as a free service to help people measure the succ...

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