What would you ask Senators McCain and Obama?

Millions of Americans will be tuning in tonight for the <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/debate/">first Presidential debate</a> between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. Historically, the debates are led by a moderator from a prestigious news organization, asking questions to each candidate and leaving time for a rebuttal from the other. Tonight is no different, with the well-respected <a title="Jim Lehrer" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer" id="i5mw">Jim Lehrer</a> from PBS serving as the debate moderator.<br /><br />While tonight's event will be exciting, many have argued that we should consider <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/debates-mccain.html" id="e2n." title="new ways for the candidates to debate">new ways for the candidates to debate</a>. Technology has enabled a historic number of voters to learn from and participate in the election process -- something that was well illustrated by the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/youtubedebates/index.html" id="fl9r" title="CNN/YouTube">CNN/YouTube debates</a>.<br /><br />While we're not officially part of the <a href="http://www.debates.org/" id="xld-" title="Commission of Presidential Debate">Commission of Presidential Debates</a>, a few days ago we launched <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/" id="vt0k" title="Google Moderator">Google Moderator.</a> It's a free tool which enables communities to submit and vote on questions for debates, presentations and events. This way, the best and most representative questions rise to the top.<br /><br />One of the featured series on Google Moderator is <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/#e%253Dagltb2RlcmF0b3JyDQsSBlNlcmllcxjvAQw" id="mjhu" title="U.S. Presidential Debates 2008">U.S. Presidential Debates 2008</a> which, at the time of this writing, has 730 people already contributing 230 questions that have over 11,000 votes. Top questions submitted so far include:<br /><blockquote><ul><li>Many Americans feel it's unfair to saddle taxpayers with the bailout of irresponsible Wall Street firms. What caused this mess and what is a fair solution which benefits the average American, not the executives who got us here in the first place? - <i>Suggested by </i><i>Doug H, Los Angeles, CA</i></li></ul><ul><li>What will be your single, top priority for your first 100 days in office? - <i>Suggested by Shira, Pensacola, FL</i></li></ul><ul><li>What will you do to reduce the size or increase the efficiency of the US government?<i> - Suggested by Dave M, Philadelphia, PA</i></li></ul></blockquote>Do these questions represent your concerns? <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/#e%253Dagltb2RlcmF0b3JyDQsSBlNlcmllcxjvAQw">What would you ask the Presidential candidates?</a> Who knows, maybe NBC legend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw" id="gc-d" title="Tom Brokaw">Tom Brokaw</a> will have a look at what you're asking before he moderates the next Presidential debate on October 7th in Nashville!<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Elections and Moderator teams</span>

What would you ask Senators McCain and Obama?

Millions of Americans will be tuning in tonight for the first Presidential debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. Historically, t...

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Our position on California's No on 8 campaign

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when <a href="http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/title-sum/prop8-title-sum.htm">Proposition 8</a> appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.<br /><br />However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology</span>

Our position on California's No on 8 campaign

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our...

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Google Toolbar 5 now available in Firefox

A few months ago <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-toolbar-take-your-tools-with-you.html">we launched</a> several new features for Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer. Since then, we've received many emails asking us when we plan to support all our new features in Firefox.<br /><br />Guess what: Starting today, you can download the latest version of <a href="http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en/index.html?utm_source=en-blog-et&utm_medium=blog-et&utm_campaign=en">Google Toolbar for Firefox</a>, available in 29 languages. This new version is the first Toolbar launched out of our St. Petersburg, Russia office. It includes all the Toolbar features you know and love, such as Search, Bookmarks and Translate. When you install it, you can try out some of our <a href="http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en/features.html">newest features</a>.<br /><br />We don't like to play favorites among Toolbar's features, but it's hard not be wowed by Autofill. You can create several profiles with personal or business information including different addresses, email addresses and credit card details. So anytime you want to fill an online form, just click on Autofill and the right information will appear in the form automatically. All your information is safely stored only in your own computer, with your credit card numbers encrypted and protected by a password.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CLENZ9VdAa6VShTQDhYbNSbj2nUTF71arA-cv4KuZ4ie0KFfRw0S1ReMXkmfS_ld12j0gLafpWP9fVmPTgn53A_gopC7XqRSE2FkWBRPbIJbJX2utmpHcfhjuPMUFTDBBpRanNrHTtPr/s1600-h/ft5_autofill.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250414785761147810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CLENZ9VdAa6VShTQDhYbNSbj2nUTF71arA-cv4KuZ4ie0KFfRw0S1ReMXkmfS_ld12j0gLafpWP9fVmPTgn53A_gopC7XqRSE2FkWBRPbIJbJX2utmpHcfhjuPMUFTDBBpRanNrHTtPr/s320/ft5_autofill.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><div><div>We also love Google Gadgets in Toolbar. Gadgets bring information from your favorite websites closer to you. For example, you can add the YouTube gadget to your Toolbar. When you want to have a quick break from work, click on the YouTube icon and search or view videos in a box that pops down from the Toolbar, without leaving the web page you are on. Close that box when you're done with it (or when your manager starts walking towards your cube). You can find the YouTube gadget and thousands of others in our <a href="http://www.google.com/gadgets/directory?synd=toolbar&frontpage=1&hl=en">gallery</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRzvVO7eGOpcH1aApaQSTtCBWChUft41-ArdH71lT1o-bMJOJwM98bOrumjlON2rjkmnYFD6yVyY-nC3VXHAqo_l7yENv4caJjIBHsbayD7eCoekv-ih9b4jSiV44WNcypTM6VygryUVgM/s1600-h/ft5_gadget.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250414931022469842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRzvVO7eGOpcH1aApaQSTtCBWChUft41-ArdH71lT1o-bMJOJwM98bOrumjlON2rjkmnYFD6yVyY-nC3VXHAqo_l7yENv4caJjIBHsbayD7eCoekv-ih9b4jSiV44WNcypTM6VygryUVgM/s320/ft5_gadget.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />We look forward to get your <a href="http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback">feedback</a>, or to hear <a href="http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/request.py?contact_type=share">your stories</a> about the exciting ways you are using Toolbar's features. We hope that you enjoy the new Google Toolbar as much as our team enjoyed building it!<br /><br />If you're interested in learning more about Google Toolbar, visit us at <a href="http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en/index.html?utm_source=en-blog-et&utm_medium=blog-et&utm_campaign=en" title="http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/FT5">http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/FT5</a> or check out our video:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FN3xzsoZK4U&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FN3xzsoZK4U&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span>Posted by Vladislav Kaznacheev, Head, St. Petersburg Engineering Office, and Igor Bazarny, Software Engineer, Toolbar team</span></div></div>

Google Toolbar 5 now available in Firefox

A few months ago we launched several new features for Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer. Since then, we've received many emails askin...

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Submitting your content to Google

We've talked a lot about our mission to organize the world's information and make it readily available to all, but we haven't spent as much time as we could helping others understand how they can participate in this endeavor. Last week we took two steps to address this: we updated the <a title="Submit Your Content page" href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/submit_content.html" id="y80r">Submit Your Content</a> site and we launched our <a title="a blog" href="http://contentcentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/submit-your-content.html" id="f:ef">Content Central blog</a>. The goal of both of these resources is to inform and help the many organizations that distribute various types of content via Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search, Book Search, YouTube, iGoogle and more.<br /><br />So whether you're a plumber, a map data provider, a local government, a major media company or a museum, we have a wealth of information available to help you reach your audience through Google. Comments are open on the blog -- we look forward to hearing from you.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Patrick Jabal, Director, Content Partnerships</span>

Submitting your content to Google

We've talked a lot about our mission to organize the world's information and make it readily available to all, but we haven't sp...

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The next Internet

<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Google%20at%2010">their responses</a>. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors</span><br /><br />Historically, the Internet has been all about connectivity between computers and among people. The World Wide Web opened enormous opportunities and motivations for the injection of content into the Internet, and search engines, such as Google's, provided a way for people to find the right content for their interests. Of course, the Internet continues to develop: new devices will find their way onto the net and new ways to access it will evolve.<br /><br />In the next decade, around 70% of the human population will have fixed or mobile access to the Internet at increasingly high speeds, up to gigabits per second. We can reliably expect that mobile devices will become a major component of the Internet, as will appliances and sensors of all kinds. Many of the things on the Internet, whether mobile or fixed, will know where they are, both geographically and logically. As you enter a hotel room, your mobile will be told its precise location including room number. When you turn your laptop on, it will learn this information as well--either from the mobile or from the room itself. It will be normal for devices, when activated, to discover what other devices are in the neighborhood, so your mobile will discover that it has a high resolution display available in what was once called a television set. If you wish, your mobile will remember where you have been and will keep track of RFID-labeled objects such as your briefcase, car keys and glasses. "Where are my glasses?" you will ask. "You were last within RFID reach of them while in the living room," your mobile or laptop will say.<br /><br />The Internet will transform the video medium as well. From its largely programmed, scheduled and streamed delivery today, video will become an interactive medium in which the choice of content and advertising will be under consumer control. Product placement will become an opportunity for viewers to click on items of interest in the field of view to learn more about them including but not limited to commercial information. Hyperlinks will associate the racing scene in <i id="y48e">Star Wars I</i> with the chariot race in <i id="y48e0">Ben Hur</i>. Conventional videoconferencing will be augmented by remotely controlled robots with an ability to move around, focus cameras and microphones, and perhaps even directly interact with the local environment under user control.<br /><br />The Internet will also become more closely integrated with other parts of our daily lives, and it will change them accordingly. Power distribution grids, for example, will become a part of the Internet's information universe. We will be able to track and manage electrical power demand and our automobiles will participate in the generation as well as the consumption of electricity. By sharing information through the Internet about energy-consuming and energy-producing devices and systems, we will be able to make them more efficient.<br /><br />A box of washing machine soap will become part of a service as Internet-enabled washing machines are managed by Web-based services that can configure and activate your washing machine. Scientific measurements and experimental results will be blogged and automatically entered into common data archives to facilitate the distribution, sharing and reproduction of experimental results. One might even imagine that scientific instruments could generate their own data blogs.<br /><br />These are but a few examples of the way in which the Internet will continue to surround and serve us in the future. The flexibility we have seen in the Internet is a consequence of one simple observation: the Internet is essentially a software artifact. As we have learned in the past several decades, software is an endless frontier. There is no limit to what can be programmed. If we can imagine it, there's a good chance it can be programmed. The Internet of the future will be suffused with software, information, data archives, and populated with devices, appliances, and people who are interacting with and through this rich fabric.<br /><br />And Google will be there, helping to make sense of it all, helping to organize and make everything accessible and useful.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist</span>

The next Internet

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

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Facts about our deal with Yahoo!

Some people have questions about our advertising agreement with Yahoo! and there are some misconceptions about it. So today we are putting facts about the deal on <a href="http://www.yahoogooglefacts.com/">a new website</a> to provide more information on the agreement and why it is good for consumers, advertisers and publishers. We'll be updating the site regularly, so check back when you have additional questions.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog Team</span>

Facts about our deal with Yahoo!

Some people have questions about our advertising agreement with Yahoo! and there are some misconceptions about it. So today we are putting f...

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Adobe users get help with Google Site Search

"No man is an island," the old saying goes. The same could be said of software: in an always-online world, even traditional desktop applications can become richer, faster, and easier to use by connecting people to information and to each other, right within the apps themselves.<br /><br />That's one of the things we thought about this week when we launched the <a href="http://tryit.adobe.com/us/cs4/family/?sdid=DOPDS" target="_blank">Adobe Creative Suite 4</a>, and why it seemed natural to work with Google to help customers search and find the information online they need to fully take advantage of the rich features Creative Suite offers.<br /><br />Now for the first time, Creative Suite applications tap directly into the new <a href="http://community.adobe.com/help/about.html" id="tnqw" title="http://community.adobe.com/help/about.html">Adobe Community Help</a> powered by <a href="http://www.google.com/sitesearch" target="_blank">Google Site Search</a>. Site Search enables us to selectively index only the most relevant information from the highest-quality community sites online. Our <a href="http://community.adobe.com/help/main" target="_blank">Google Site Search index</a> includes content such as product help, TechNotes, Developer Connection articles, and Design Center tutorials, as well as the best online content from the Adobe<br />community.<br /><br />What's the upshot? We've plugged the whole community brain trust right into the Suite and used the power of Google Site Search to do it. Creative Suite 4 customers can find fast, relevant information from our online communities, without ever having to leave their desktop work environments, making design faster and more fun. And because we've built the Adobe Flash Platform into the whole Suite, other developers can take these concepts even farther. This is just the start of great online integration to come.<br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/communityhelp/" id="di6_" title="http://blogs.adobe.com/communityhelp/">Find out more</a> about how Adobe is connecting customers to Adobe Community Help online from within Creative Suite 4. <br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by John Nack, Senior Product Manager, Adobe</span>

Adobe users get help with Google Site Search

"No man is an island," the old saying goes. The same could be said of software: in an always-online world, even traditional deskto...

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