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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. 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>. 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. 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. 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. 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. Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel; Jane Horvath, Senior Privacy Counsel; and Alma Whitten, Software Engineer

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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Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time

For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint -- from revolutions and politics to fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written. And it's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily. The problem is that most of these newspapers are not available online. We want to change that. Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let's say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon] on Google News Archive Search, and you'll be able to find and read an <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w0sNAAAAIBAJ&dq=pittsburgh&sjid=D20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6256,2864141" id="jmpk" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139);" title="original article">original article</a> from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w0sNAAAAIBAJ&dq=armstrong&sjid=D20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6256%2C2864141" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243518421966384850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Q0zqD7OidCXGWRVxse42vMKqJuBJ8eW_oWAgftQEaLql81qfQhaIRtyZYFkv0XDQ7H3WUFeDIgGi29IhscjNt4MaSBBppuZs5VDSApaPD6BmE4u64FEtsAbXwZG965plA-y14ynIAmfn/s320/News_archive_1969.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a>Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KNIIAAAAIBAJ&dq=nineteenth%20amendment%201920&sjid=CC8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4694%2C1907026" id="fr1h" title="headlines">headlines</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=758KAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5233,4059827&dq=clark+gable+army" id="rr1." title="articles">articles</a>, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6oQLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6lMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2092,2577195&dq=ford+model+t" id="o_sm" title="advertisements">advertisements</a> and all. This effort expands on the contributions of others who've already begun digitizing historical newspapers. In 2006, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/history-as-it-unfolds.html">we started working</a> with publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post to index existing digital archives and make them searchable via the Google News Archive. Now, this effort will enable us to help you find an even greater range of material from newspapers large and small, in conjunction with partners such as ProQuest and Heritage, who've joined in this initiative. One of our partners, the <a href="http://www.qctonline.com/" id="otku" style="font-style: italic;" title="Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph">Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph</a>, is actually the oldest newspaper in North America—history buffs, take note: it has been publishing continuously for more than 244 years. You’ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch">Google News Archive</a> or by using the timeline feature after searching <a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a>. Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]. Stories we've scanned under this initiative will appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked "Google News Archive." Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well. This effort is just the beginning. As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online. Posted by Punit Soni, Product Manager

Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time

For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint -- from revolutions and politics to fash...

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Making terms of service clearer

Last week's <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html" target="_blank" title="launch of Google Chrome">launch of Google Chrome</a> generated some discussion over the legal language in our new browser's terms of service (TOS). As we noted in a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-chromes-terms-of.html" target="_blank" title="we noted in this post">subsequent post</a> on Google Chrome's terms of service: <blockquote>"... 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."</blockquote>We've also seen some discussion on a few blogs about how our universal terms of service apply to other products, with some users worried that Google is trying to claim ownership of the content they generate. To be clear: our terms do not claim ownership of your content -- what you create is yours and remains yours. But in lawyer-speak, we need to ask for a 'license' (which basically means your permission) to display this content to the wider world when that's what you intend. This issue is not unique to Google; it applies to lots of other Internet companies that display and transmit user content. You can see some other terms of service here from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=508088">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html" target="_blank" title="eBay">eBay</a>, and <a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf" target="_blank" title="Facebook">Facebook</a><a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf" target="_blank" title="Facebook">.</a> In some of our products, such as <a href="http://www.google.com/mail/help/terms_of_use.html" id="f0ru" title="Gmail">Gmail</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/google-d-s/addlterms.html" id="oy_e" title="Google Docs">Google Docs</a>, we have included additional terms to make it clear that we do not claim ownership of the content. But even without those additional clarifications, we still wouldn't be claiming ownership of your content -- just a license that gives us your permission to use the content to provide the service. The additional terms are there to reassure our users that they still own their own content, even after giving us the permission we need to help them share and collaborate with others, whether via Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Google Docs, or other services. Because, in the end, that's what's most important: making sure you're comfortable using our services to share, publish, and store your stuff. We'll continue to look at our terms of service to make them as clear and user-friendly as possible, because at the end of the day if you're not comfortable, our products won't succeed -- and we know it. Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel

Making terms of service clearer

Last week's launch of Google Chrome generated some discussion over the legal language in our new browser's terms of service (TOS). ...

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Running Hood to Coast

When I woke up at 4:00 AM in a dark field, after just a half hour of sleep, I wondered if I was crazy. When I put on my headlamp and running shoes for a six-mile run—my second of three runs that day—I knew that I was crazy. But I was happy about it because I knew that my teammates were just as crazy. I was running Hood to Coast with the Google relay team. That's a 197-mile Oregon race that starts at Mount Hood, travels through Portland, and finishes on the beach in the town of Seaside. More than 1000 teams participate in the race, with 12 runners on each team running three legs each. The 12 runners on our team were all Googlers from different parts of the company: AdSense, AdWords, Google.org, Engineering, Search and Analytics, Search Quality, and more. We had runners from a number of offices: <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=why-ma-cam.html" target="_blank"> Cambridge</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?loc_id=1120&dep_id=1173" target="_blank"> Chicago</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=why-ca-mv.html" target="_blank"> Mountain View</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=why-ny-ny.html" target="_blank">New York</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=why-ca-sfo.html" target="_blank">San Francisco</a>, and <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=why-wa.html" target="_blank">Seattle </a>. Many of us had <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/powered-by-google.html" target="_blank">run Hood to Coast</a> before and even <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/running-relay-del-sol.html" target="_blank">won similar races</a> for Google; some of us were rookies to all-night relay races. What brought us all together was a love of running and a desire to get Team Google to the finish line as fast as possible — even if that meant that we wouldn't get much sleep. We started last Friday night with fresh legs, fresh clothes, and lots of enthusiasm. Over the next 197 miles we wore out our legs, made our running clothes and vans smell terrible, and generated even more enthusiasm by coming together as a team and cheering each other on. We had a lot to cheer about, because everyone contributed great performances and because we ran faster than we expected. We finished in 19 hours and 45 minutes, which meant that we averaged 10 miles per hour for the race. That was good enough to finish in <a href="http://www.racecenter.com/results/2008/htc08.htm" target="_blank">9th place overall</a> and in 3rd place in the corporate division—behind a couple of running shoe companies that you might have heard about. We were more than happy with the result. As we gathered on the beach near the finish line, we enjoyed the sun, the sense of accomplishment, and the camaraderie of our teammates. I smiled and thought back to when I woke up at 4:00 AM in that dark field. Considering all that we had accomplished, maybe I wasn't so crazy after all. Here's a picture of the Team Google runners and drivers, enjoying the beach at the finish. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeU8ZjD0awzb2iyzFa7IBeTW2gpxzKFQpgHhGKP6IECjqJjBJ5CegzRwFeUHZ4VbA3fGhbZJOgqXIh0jDIjmW42qt1WNsT9ZGsMgYrvYBM134lBnjslb_Q4DEhqYsgtASB8UxyzKahsSsf/s1600-h/Hood+to+Coast.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241531579562690626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeU8ZjD0awzb2iyzFa7IBeTW2gpxzKFQpgHhGKP6IECjqJjBJ5CegzRwFeUHZ4VbA3fGhbZJOgqXIh0jDIjmW42qt1WNsT9ZGsMgYrvYBM134lBnjslb_Q4DEhqYsgtASB8UxyzKahsSsf/s320/Hood+to+Coast.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;"></a> Posted by Chris Holstrom, Technical Writer

Running Hood to Coast

When I woke up at 4:00 AM in a dark field, after just a half hour of sleep, I wondered if I was crazy. When I put on my headlamp and running...

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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. 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. 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: <blockquote style="font-family: courier new;">11. Content license from you 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. 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. Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel

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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Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums)

A little over two years ago, we launched <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/home">Picasa Web Albums</a> to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world. Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others. For starters, there's a brand-new feature called "<a href="http://picasa.google.com/features-nametags.html">name tags</a>" in Picasa Web Albums that helps you quickly label all the people in your photos, so you can organize and share your photos based on who's in the picture. Name tags uses advanced technology to automatically group similar faces together. That way, you can quickly label all the people you care about in your photo collection. Once you've labeled your photos, it's then a snap to do things like create a slideshow with every picture of you and your best friend, or easily share party photos with everybody who appears in that photo album. This demo video shows you what you can do with name tags: <object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/teeGF-w5Cpw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/teeGF-w5Cpw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> There's more to Picasa Web Albums. The site now has a fresh, clean look that makes photos look great, and a new "<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/explore">Explore</a>" page that allows you to browse some of the most interesting public content on our site, including "Recent Photos," a near-real-time view of public photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. You can now also email photos directly to Picasa Web Albums. Of course, Picasa Web Albums is only half the story. The great advantage of Picasa Web Albums has always been its integration with Picasa, Google's free photo management software for your PC. And today we're making public the <a href="http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/">beta version of Picasa 3</a> at picasa.google.com. Sharing photos with Picasa has always been remarkably simple, but in Picasa 3, we've made sharing so simple you don't even have to lift a finger. A new 'sync to web' button allows you to sync specified albums on your PC to the web. If you edit or add photos to the album on your PC, those changes will be automatically reflected on Picasa Web Albums. You can even specify who you'd like to share your web albums with from the Picasa software itself. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQUA6ud3TwD-q2hG3XcFY6mnVBiALf-XUHdyeqDSrUy_xoRKXStXUhW8QkTQWGLEGLGuifTUkwln1QPS7KbnbXB_1AKVMte0bWEbSrOBFMRwlX8byPC1vpYCYBWhNJ4dUe5kcP5klHriHG/s1600-h/collage_and_text.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241115188595986562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQUA6ud3TwD-q2hG3XcFY6mnVBiALf-XUHdyeqDSrUy_xoRKXStXUhW8QkTQWGLEGLGuifTUkwln1QPS7KbnbXB_1AKVMte0bWEbSrOBFMRwlX8byPC1vpYCYBWhNJ4dUe5kcP5klHriHG/s400/collage_and_text.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0zmhkCIZJq4B3UZEVKO7cPDHacu6Wc5KPulUGgQlxMwB9jbBa2Oj4RhR-W9T0DUNFoRPwEgi9981DXNHFNiy3-3JPe6EiFQm7Lt1gVrKLg-sxnjHaUb2GlU7nLnsd7xb0lAzE_zb6O9WI/s1600-h/picasa_blog_movie_tool.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241115455753872594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0zmhkCIZJq4B3UZEVKO7cPDHacu6Wc5KPulUGgQlxMwB9jbBa2Oj4RhR-W9T0DUNFoRPwEgi9981DXNHFNiy3-3JPe6EiFQm7Lt1gVrKLg-sxnjHaUb2GlU7nLnsd7xb0lAzE_zb6O9WI/s400/picasa_blog_movie_tool.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> We've <a href="http://www.google.com/support/photos/bin/answer.py?answer=93773">packed many other new features</a> into Picasa 3. There's a slew of powerful new editing tools to retouch and restore photos, automatically detect and fix red-eye, or attractively add text to your images. Plus, there's plenty of the fun stuff -- we completely overhauled things like photo collages and slideshows, giving you more creative freedom over composition and layout. Not to mention a brand-new movie maker that can blend photos, video, webcam capture, and music to create customized movies that you can easily share on YouTube. You can learn more about Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums on the <a href="http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2008/09/announcing-picasa-30-and-new-version-of.html">Google Photos blog</a>, or by watching the overview video below. Please give both a try -- and give us <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/picasa">feedback</a>! <object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rskC6c_5L1M&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rskC6c_5L1M&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object> Posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager