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Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars

Posted by Beate List, University Programme, Zurich A few months ago we had the great pleasure of <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/congratulations-to-our-us-and-canadian.html">announcing</a> the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn. This scholarship program, originally established in the U.S. to honor the work of <a href="http://anitaborg.org/about/history/anita-borg/">Anita Borg</a> and to recognize outstanding young women scholars in computer science and related fields, expanded to Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 31 countries applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were selected; 20 women received a €5,000 scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining 43 finalists received a €1,000 award. Each of the finalists visited our <a href="http://maps.google.ch/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&q=google+switzerland&sll=46.362093,9.036255&sspn=6.103087,8.931885&ie=UTF8&ll=47.365426,8.527966&spn=0.023399,0.03489&z=15&iwloc=A" id="oxhn" title="Google Engineering Centre in Zurich">Engineering Centre in Zurich</a> for our annual Scholars' Retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social fun. All of it was a way for the young women to share experiences and come together as leaders in the computer science field. Visit the <a href="http://www.google.com/anitaborg-europe/" id="h-gg" title="Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page">Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page</a> for more on the program. Hearty congratulations to these winners! The 2008 Europe Anita Borg Scholars <ul><li>Cynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands</li><li>Despina Michael - University of Cyprus, Cyprus </li><li>Dina Petri - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain</li><li>Inbal Talgam -Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel</li><li>Katy Howland - University of Sussex, UK</li><li>Kerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain</li><li>Ksenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University, Russia</li><li>Mirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Israel</li><li>Nadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, Russia</li><li>Olga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain</li><li>Patricia Moore - Dublin City University, Ireland </li><li>Rebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of London, UK</li><li>Sara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford, UK</li><li>Seda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium</li><li>Silvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UK</li><li>Siska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands</li><li>Stefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany</li><li>Svetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of Mathematics, Russia</li><li>Sylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UK</li><li>Ulyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, Russia</li></ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYsQghjvhpdLond5hzJ86FOaeH4pDbF_44NdRcxO1e7mts0C5bN10SCyjcoWiBYJ6jtGi3hWHFKVG9uqRmTjZT7AGa4D-RL6V7fuUG-qgDTFrY_iYvRGgYu5USskLenlnFNNx5nanlCM-f/s1600-h/Borg_EU_winners_08.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224376422099994658" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYsQghjvhpdLond5hzJ86FOaeH4pDbF_44NdRcxO1e7mts0C5bN10SCyjcoWiBYJ6jtGi3hWHFKVG9uqRmTjZT7AGa4D-RL6V7fuUG-qgDTFrY_iYvRGgYu5USskLenlnFNNx5nanlCM-f/s320/Borg_EU_winners_08.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Update: Added photo.

Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars

Posted by Beate List, University Programme, Zurich A few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg S...

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Templates bring Docs to life

What do <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=wedding&sort=hottest&view=default">wedding planners</a>, <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=gas+mileage+log&sort=hottest&view=default">gas mileage calculators</a> and <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=album&sort=hottest&view=default">photo albums</a> have in common? They're all examples of templates available in the <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates">Google Docs Template Gallery</a> that Sarah Beth Eisinger (Docs Templates engineer), Grant Dasher (intern), and I built and (happily!) released today. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ZefGPnHJ1hZXR1fKyaAuj2NU9Baut0UA9fdCjM8hz6k67lPreLa83JUZIynuYK3ihPQ__y3yNb4uBIFh4VNJKv8lzLwd2Qg7hsqvZqDvzal_GaN45SkOZ1omvrFI5I4wzTDGkTNAbq3K/s1600-h/Docs_1.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223774544642625666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ZefGPnHJ1hZXR1fKyaAuj2NU9Baut0UA9fdCjM8hz6k67lPreLa83JUZIynuYK3ihPQ__y3yNb4uBIFh4VNJKv8lzLwd2Qg7hsqvZqDvzal_GaN45SkOZ1omvrFI5I4wzTDGkTNAbq3K/s320/Docs_1.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> When researching how people use templates, we saw that lots of you create documents for all aspects of your lives. You need <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?category=17&sort=hottest&view=default">resumes and cover letters</a> to look for jobs and <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=fax&sort=hottest&view=default">fax cover letters</a> and <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=invoice&sort=hottest&view=default">invoices</a> to run your businesses. And of course you want to use documents in fun ways with family and friends, such as unique designs and layouts for <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?category=4&sort=hottest&view=default">invitation cards</a> and <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=calendar&sort=hottest">calendars</a>. Finally, everyone wants to be able to have tools that "just work": <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=labels&sort=hottest&view=default">print mailing labels</a>, <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=stock+portfolio&sort=hottest&view=default">track portfolio values</a>, and <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?q=project+tracking&sort=hottest&view=default">manage projects</a> without having to painstakingly create documents from scratch. These needs inspired our new templates and gallery. We developed these in conjunction with <a href="http://www.avery.com/">Avery Dennison</a>, <a href="http://www.vertex42.com/">Vertex42.com</a>, <a href="http://www.templatezone.com/google-docs.php">TemplateZone</a>, and <a href="http://www.visabusinessnetwork.com/">Visa Business</a>. Many templates leverage the collaborative aspect of Google Docs so that several people can work on a single document online without having to email attachments back and forth. To hear the story behind two templates, watch these videos: <object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dSGkzDgW1fA&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dSGkzDgW1fA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> <object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zbLmDj-BLxE&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zbLmDj-BLxE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> To get started, go directly to the <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates">template gallery</a> or access it from the "New" menu in your document list. Templates are currently available only in English, but other languages are coming soon. They're also available to Google Apps users. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxyKlSomUBcB1ERCPnspF29VozucIfeQqgI3jVRmAYqDoF1pC4KqlbN7kEhCd4qdeEf0FBVvfpqw7gEIL6aC8vCAF-KyCSPsxsRG2C4RhLLotig6-Kaaynp4TDt-2f6YBz13U0-dKcw9XE/s1600-h/Docs_2.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223774795282656418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxyKlSomUBcB1ERCPnspF29VozucIfeQqgI3jVRmAYqDoF1pC4KqlbN7kEhCd4qdeEf0FBVvfpqw7gEIL6aC8vCAF-KyCSPsxsRG2C4RhLLotig6-Kaaynp4TDt-2f6YBz13U0-dKcw9XE/s320/Docs_2.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Posted by Valerie Blechar, Templates Engineer, Google Docs (Cross-posted on the <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/07/templates-bring-docs-to-life.html">Google Docs Blog</a>.)

Templates bring Docs to life

What do wedding planners , gas mileage calculators and photo albums have in common? They're all examples of templates available in th...

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Technologies behind Google ranking

In my previous post, I introduced the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/introduction-to-google-ranking.html" id="p3.q" title="philosophies behind Google ranking">philosophies behind Google ranking</a>. As part of our effort to <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/introduction-to-google-search-quality.html" id="g4xf" title="discuss search quality more">discuss search quality</a>, I want to tell you more about the technologies behind our ranking. The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR). The IR community has studied search for almost 50 years. It uses statistical signals of word salience, like word frequency, to rank pages. (See <a href="http://singhal.info/ieee2001.pdf" id="ae1w" title="Modern Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview">"Modern Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview"</a> for a quick overview of IR technology.) IR gave us a solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous system on top using links, page structure, and many other such innovations. Search in the last decade has moved from give me what I said to give me what I want. User expectations from search have rightly increased. We work hard to fulfill the expectations of each and every user, and to do that we need to better understand the pages, the queries, and our users. Over the last decade we have pushed the technologies for understanding these three components (of the search process) to completely new dimensions. When we talk about queries at Google, we use square brackets [ ] to mark the beginning and end of queries (see "<a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/writing-google-queries" id="mc-." title="How to write queries">How to write queries</a>" by Matt Cutts), a notation I will use throughout this post. (Pages and search results change frequently, so in time, some examples used here may not behave as explained.) <ul id="jdpk"><li id="jdpk0"> Understanding pages: Over years we have invested heavily in our crawl and indexing system. As a result we have a very large and very fresh index. In addition to size and freshness, we have improved our index in other ways. One of the key technologies we have developed to understand pages is associating important concepts to a page even when they are not obvious on the page. We find the official homepage for <a href="http://www.sprovieri.com/" id="v.ps" title="Sprovieri Gallery">Sprovieri Gallery</a> in London for the Italian query [<a href="http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=galleria+sprovieri+londra" id="uhkl" title="galleria sprovieri londra">galleria sprovieri londra</a>], even though the official page does not have either London or Londra on it. In the U.S., a user searching for [cool tech pc vancouver, wa] finds the homepage <a href="http://www.cooltechpc.com/" id="fzgl12" target="_blank">www.cooltechpc.com</a> even though the page does not mention anywhere that they are in Vancouver, WA. Other technologies we have developed include distinctions between important and less important words in the page and the freshness of the information on the page. </li></ul> <ul id="jdpk1"><li id="jdpk2"> Understanding queries: It is critical that we understand what our users are looking for (beyond just the few words in their query). We have made several notable advances in this area including a best-in-class spelling suggestion system, an advanced synonyms system, and a very strong concept analysis system. </li></ul> <div id="jdpk3" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Most users have used our spelling suggestion system at one time or another. It knows that someone searching for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kofee+annan" id="hz8c" title="kofee annan">kofee annan</a>] is really searching for Mr. Kofi Annan, and is prompted: Did you mean: <a class="p" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=kofi+annan&spell=1" id="brt_0">kofi annan</a>; whereas someone searching for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kofee+beans" id="usu6" title="kofee beans">kofee beans</a>] is actually looking for coffee beans. Doing this internationally with very high accuracy is hard, and we do it well. </div> <div id="jdpk4" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Synonyms are the foundation of our query understanding work. This is one of the hardest problems we are solving at Google. Though sometimes obvious to humans, it is an unsolved problem in automatic language processing. As a user, I don't want to think too much about what words I should use in my queries. Often I don't even know what the right words are. This is where our synonyms system comes into action. Our synonyms system can do sophisticated query modifications, e.g., it knows that the word 'Dr' in the query [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Dr+Zhivago" id="qjfs" title="Dr Zhivago">Dr Zhivago</a>] stands for Doctor whereas in [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Rodeo+Dr" id="wpsc" title="Rodeo Dr">Rodeo Dr</a>] it means Drive. A user looking for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=back+bumper+repair" id="w9kh" title="back bumper repair">back bumper repair</a>] gets results about rear bumper repair. For [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Ramstein+ab" id="riso" title="Ramstein ab">Ramstein ab</a>], we automatically look for Ramstein Air Base; for the query query [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=b%26b+ab" id="fycv" title="b&b ab">b&b ab</a>] we search for Bed and Breakfasts in Alberta, Canada. We have developed this level of query understanding for almost one hundred different languages, which is what I am truly proud of. </div> <div id="jv3g" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Another technology we use in our ranking system is concept identification. Identifying critical concepts in the query allows us to return much more relevant results. For example, our algorithms understand that in the query [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=new+york+times+square+church" id="d.yj" title="new york times square church">new york times square church</a>] the user is looking for the <a href="http://www.tscnyc.org/" id="nre5" title="well-known church in Times Square">well-known church in Times Square</a> and not for articles from the New York Times. We don't just stop at identifying concepts; we further enhance the query with the right concepts when, for instance, someone looking for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PC+and+its+impact+on+people" id="a992" title="PC and its impact on people">PC and its impact on people</a>] is in fact looking for impact of computers on society, or someone who searches for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rainforest+instructional+activities+for+vocabulary" id="yjid" title="rainforest instructional activities for vocabulary">rainforest instructional activities for vocabulary</a>] is really looking for rain forest lesson plans. Our query analysis algorithms have many such state-of-the-art techniques built into them, and once again, we do this internationally in almost every language we serve. </div> <ul id="sx.0"><li id="sx.00"> Understanding users: Our work on interpreting user intent is aimed at returning results people really want, not just what they said in their query. This work starts with a world class localization system, and adds to it our advanced personalization technology, and several other great strides we have made in interpreting user intent, e.g. Universal Search. </li></ul> <div id="qb0c1" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Our clear focus on "best locally relevant results served globally" is reflected in our work on localization. The same query typed in multiple countries may deserve completely different results. A user looking for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="bn23" title="bank">bank</a>] in the US should get American banks, whereas a user in the <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="r09t" title="UK">UK</a> is either looking for the Bank Fashion line or for British financial institutions. The results for this query should return local financial institutions in other English speaking countries like <a href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="wr74" title="Australia">Australia</a>, <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="di09" title="Canada">Canada</a>, <a href="http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="o:3b" title="New Zealand">New Zealand</a>, <a href="http://www.google.co.za/search?hl=en&q=bank" id="ic2g" title="South Africa">South Africa</a>. The fun really starts when this query is typed in non-English-speaking countries like <a href="http://www.google.com.eg/search?hl=ar&q=bank" id="zk-4" title="Egypt">Egypt</a>, <a href="http://www.google.co.il/search?hl=iw&q=bank" id="vk2o" title="Israel">Israel</a>, <a href="http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=ja&q=bank" id="kfvy" title="Japan">Japan</a>, <a href="http://www.google.ru/search?hl=ru&q=bank" id="dkh4" title="Russia">Russia</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com.sa/search?hl=ar&q=bank" id="megx" title="Saudi Arabia">Saudi Arabia</a>, <a href="http://www.google.ch/search?hl=de&q=bank" id="j-5_" title="Switzerland">Switzerland</a>. Likewise the query [football] refers to entirely different sports in <a href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=football" id="kf::" title="Australia">Australia</a>, the <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=football" id="d7ty" title="UK">UK</a>, and the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=football" id="ouj2" title="US">US</a>. These examples mostly show how we get the localized version of the same concept correctly (financial institution, sport, etc.). However, the same query can mean entirely different things in different countries. For example, [Côte d'Or] is a geographic region in <a href="http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=C%C3%B4te+d%27Or" id="yath" title="France">France</a> - but it is a large chocolate manufacturer in neighboring French-speaking <a href="http://www.google.be/search?hl=fr&q=C%C3%B4te+d%27Or" id="qcng" title="Belgium">Belgium</a>; and yes, we get that right too :-). </div> <div id="ntam" style="margin-left: 40px;">Personalization is another strong feature in our search system which tailors search results to individual users. Users who are logged-in while searching and have signed up for Web History get results that are more relevant for them than the general Google results. For example, someone who does a lot football-related searches might get more football related results for [giants], while other users might get results related to the baseball team. Similarly, if you tend to prefer results from a particular shopping site, you will be more likely to get results from that site when you search for products. Our evaluation shows that users who get personalized results find them to be more relevant than non-personalized results. </div> <div id="u8vo" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Another case of user intent can be observed for the query [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chevrolet+magnum" id="wdec" title="chevrolet magnum">chevrolet magnum</a>]. Magnum is actually made by Dodge and not Chevrolet. So we present the results for Dodge Magnum with the prompt See results for: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&pwst=1&q=dodge+magnum&revid=1169821596&sa=X&oi=revisions_inline&resnum=4&ct=revision&cd=1" id="yi:q">dodge magnum</a> in our result set. </div> <div id="l1w_" style="margin-left: 40px;"> Our work on Universal Search is another example of how we interpret user intent to give them what they (sometimes) really want. Someone searching for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bangalore" id="e3t3" title="bangalore">bangalore</a>] not only gets the important web pages, they also get a map, a video showing street life, traffic, etc. in Bangalore -- watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGkUFinntc" id="m8dr" title="this video">this video</a> I almost feel I am there :-) -- and at the time of writing there is relevant news and relevant blogs about Bangalore.</div> <blockquote>Finally let me briefly mention the latest advance we have made in search: Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR). CLIR allows users to first discover information that is not in their language, and then using Google's translation technology, we make this information accessible. I call this advance: give me what I want in any language. A user looking for Tony Blair's biography in Russia who types the query in Russian [<a href="http://www.google.ru/search?hl=ru&q=%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8+%D0%91%D0%BB%D1%8D%D1%80+%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F" id="u5y0" title="Тони Блэр биография">Тони Блэр биография</a>] is prompted at the bottom of our results to search the English web with:</blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf4ttWCrROWJH-4eJk820zBOpwf0VQuRqNsrEmPL9AQ1b4cXiXgCYpgHWt2-xDpULXs62ggaEjO5X0hSHom6dtR09mKLycHoooDgILi3MSEKO7gnZnAfBhkiDsa9xs2sBMvpEl7ZgdqTp_/s1600-h/RU_example_2.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223635052799224626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf4ttWCrROWJH-4eJk820zBOpwf0VQuRqNsrEmPL9AQ1b4cXiXgCYpgHWt2-xDpULXs62ggaEjO5X0hSHom6dtR09mKLycHoooDgILi3MSEKO7gnZnAfBhkiDsa9xs2sBMvpEl7ZgdqTp_/s320/RU_example_2.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a></div><blockquote>Similarly a user searching for Disney movie songs in Egypt with the query [<a href="http://www.google.com.eg/search?hl=ar&q=%D8%A3%D8%BA%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A+%D8%A3%D9%81%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85+%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%B2%D9%86%D9%8A" id="qs8d" title="أغاني أفلام ديزني">أغاني أفلام ديزني</a>] is prompted to search the English web. We are very excited about CLIR as it truly brings us closer to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. I could go on and on showing examples of state-of-the-art technology that we have developed to make our ranking system as good as it is, but the fact is that search is nowhere close to being a solved problem. Many queries still don't get satisfactory results from Google, and each such query is an opportunity to improve our ranking system. I am confident that with numerous techniques under development in our group, we will make large improvements to our ranking algorithms in the near future.</blockquote>I hope my two posts about Google ranking have made it clear that we live and breathe search, and we are more passionate than ever about it. Our fervor for serving all our users worldwide is unprecedented. We pride ourselves in running a very good ranking system, and are working incredibly hard every day to make it even better. Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Technologies behind Google ranking

In my previous post, I introduced the philosophies behind Google ranking . As part of our effort to discuss search quality , I want to tell ...

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Students surf their way to success

Early on in my career at Google I was approached by a former professor of mine, Jamie Murphy, who was eager to give his students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Apart from delivering a great learning experience, Jamie wanted to make sure that his students would leave university with skills they could take directly into the workforce. Together, Jamie and I recruited a panel of professors from all over the globe and came up with the <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/2008winners.html">Google Online Marketing Challenge</a>. Student teams had to identify a local business with a website, but no experience of online marketing, and then were given free Google AdWords vouchers worth the equivalent of US$200. The student teams worked with the local business to set up an AdWords account and structure an online marketing campaign which would increase web traffic and sales for the local business. The teams had three weeks to run the campaign and had to submit their campaign report to a panel of international academic judges. Today we're announcing the winners: an innovative team from the University of Western Australia who worked with an indoor rock-climbing school that scaled the heights and scooped the global prize. The winners will be whisked off to Mountain View, California for a tour of the Googleplex and meet with the creators of AdWords and other executives. To help them in their ongoing studies, each team member will also receive an Apple MacBook Pro. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOorGyh86tBbnTmSRqYpW0iMc452H4RpGnsc5Qqn-qm6DkxpuPOh4mPmPzLZ404TzzTdhHFc6KJ9UVbpxXJn2nQ6pHGWeXWuQE9aURphHD6I2D0J5T6Fuuh8t40rpXnCeY0ys8Ni1_DW6a/s1600-h/MktgChall_winners.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223414087197189090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOorGyh86tBbnTmSRqYpW0iMc452H4RpGnsc5Qqn-qm6DkxpuPOh4mPmPzLZ404TzzTdhHFc6KJ9UVbpxXJn2nQ6pHGWeXWuQE9aURphHD6I2D0J5T6Fuuh8t40rpXnCeY0ys8Ni1_DW6a/s320/MktgChall_winners.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> <div style="text-align: center;">L to R: Dr. Fang Liu, Glen Linthorne (from the partner business), Victor Tsen (hanging), Amy Smith, Aaron Balm, and Lauren Bobridge. Absent: Anna Usikov. </div> There were also three regional winners, including students from Pennsylvania State University, who won in the fierce Americas field, while a team from the Universität Bern in Switzerland beat some impressive competition to win for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific winners came from the Australian Graduate School of Management with a skillful campaign for a small specialty cake business (actually based in California). These four teams were clearly deserving winners, but the enthusiasm all the students and professors showed for the challenge was inspiring. We initially expected slightly more than 1,000 students to take part, and were thrilled when c. 8,500 students from 47+ countries put their marketing skills to the test. The success of the challenge and the positive feedback we've had from both professors and students was more than we had hoped for. As Dr. Fang Liu, who taught the winning team, notes: <blockquote>“The Online Marketing Challenge offers a great opportunity for students to develop their skills and experience in online marketing. Local businesses also benefit as the AdWords campaigns have helped promote their business to a wider community. I feel absolutely thrilled that one of my student teams is the global winner." </blockquote>We're delighted to have worked with professors to find a fun and innovative way to introduce online marketing into the university curriculum. And we're happy to say the Challenge will carry on next year, and we hope it will go from strength to strength. Here are <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/about.html">more details on the Challenge and our winners</a>. Posted by Lee Hunter, Product Marketing Manager

Students surf their way to success

Early on in my career at Google I was approached by a former professor of mine, Jamie Murphy, who was eager to give his students hands-on ex...

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Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage." We and other forward-looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring such people. What are we looking for? At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a matter of course. After all, that's what most education is concerned with. But the non-routine problems offer the opportunity to create competitive advantage, and solving those problems requires creative thought and tenacity. Here's a real-life example, a challenge a team of our engineers once faced: designing a spell-checker for the Google search engine. The routine solution would be to run queries through a dictionary. The non-routine, creative solution is to use the query corrections and refinements that other users have made in the past to offer spelling suggestions for new queries. This approach enables us to correct all the words that aren't in the dictionary, helping many more users in the process. How do we find these non-routine savants? There are many factors, of course, but we primarily look for ... ... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know. ... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions. ... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it. ... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations. ... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do. These characteristics are not just important in our business, but in every business, as well as in government, philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how to acquire them. It's easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many required skills will change: developers today code in something called Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities. And then keep on challenging yourself, because learning doesn't end with graduation. In fact, in the real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered problems are not in the back of the textbook, the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major. Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management

Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for com...

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"In their own words": political videos meet Google speech-to-text technology

Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet and Ari Bezman, Product Managers In this U.S. election year, what information could be more important than the candidates' own words to describe their views, actions and platforms? Our teams have been working to develop tools to make it easier for people to track election-related information. A few months back, YouTube encouraged everyone to participate in the discussion process through the CNN/YouTube debates, Google Checkout offered an easy and fast way for individuals to make contributions to political candidates, and the Geo team created maps and layers to inform voters during elections. Today, the Google speech team (part of <a href="http://research.google.com/">Google Research</a>) is launching the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top&url=www.google.com/ig/modules/elections_video_search.xml">Google Elections Video Search gadget</a>, our modest contribution to the electoral process. With the help of our speech recognition technologies, videos from YouTube's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/members?s=mv&t=a&g=8">Politicians channels</a> are automatically transcribed from speech to text and indexed. Using the gadget you can search not only the titles and descriptions of the videos, but also their spoken content. Additionally, since speech recognition tells us exactly when words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts of the videos you find. Here's a look: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnEE0yW91NxtSGkaUvdK89P9dKh9B_67eZWoJY8NPqQKsrqe1fvuVGyH6J1i42zNGyZt5_AmfjDPQtiEKen9tRCjnQ23OzuGsoWKF0pRH9422-0r3QncreGEtLQM4jty8SSIoL4p7agaFY/s1600-h/screen-shot-final-final.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223001365359592226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnEE0yW91NxtSGkaUvdK89P9dKh9B_67eZWoJY8NPqQKsrqe1fvuVGyH6J1i42zNGyZt5_AmfjDPQtiEKen9tRCjnQ23OzuGsoWKF0pRH9422-0r3QncreGEtLQM4jty8SSIoL4p7agaFY/s400/screen-shot-final-final.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> In addition to providing voters with election information, we also hope to find out more about how people use speech technology to search and consume videos, and to learn what works and what doesn't, to help us improve our products. The gadget only searches videos uploaded to YouTube's Politicians channels, which include videos from Senator Obama's and Senator McCain's campaigns, as well as those from dozens of other candidates and politicians. It usually takes less than a few hours for a video to appear in the index after it has been published on YouTube. Candidates can control the videos that appear in the gadget by managing the content they upload to YouTube. While some of the transcript snippets you see may not be 100% accurate, we hope that you'll find the product useful for most purposes. Speech recognition is a difficult problem that hasn't yet been completely solved, but we're constantly working to refine our algorithms and improve the accuracy and relevance of these transcribed results. To try it out, just visit our <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top&url=www.google.com/ig/modules/elections_video_search.xml">iGoogle gadget page</a>. We welcome your feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment while you're there.

"In their own words": political videos meet Google speech-to-text technology

Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet and Ari Bezman, Product Managers In this U.S. election year, what information could be more important than the can...

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Introducing the Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program

Posted by Liza Ma, Associate Product Manager Creating content for the web is easy, but getting people to discover it can be a challenge. When we launched <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" id="lqyb" title="Google Webmaster Tools">Google Webmaster Tools</a> in 2006, the goal was to reach as many webmasters as possible in order to help them create more search engine-friendly sites. We wanted to help webmasters understand how their sites interact with Google, and we've introduced a number of features that help webmasters identify and fix problems with their sites that prevented visitors from reaching them. Google Webmaster Tools offers important data such as when sites were last crawled, who's linking to them, and what the most popular search terms are that drive traffic to their sites. To further help webmasters create better sites, we're launching the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/provider/index.html" id="b:il" title="Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program">Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program</a>, which lets domain hosters from all over use our APIs to get their customers started with Google Webmaster Tools. It's an exciting development for us, and we look forward to helping more webmasters understand search. Read more about the program on our <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/07/helping-yourself-to-webmaster-tools.html" id="tvzg" title="Webmaster Central blog">Webmaster Central blog</a>.

Introducing the Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program

Posted by Liza Ma, Associate Product Manager Creating content for the web is easy, but getting people to discover it can be a challenge. Whe...

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