healthy4u

iGoogle's got game... themes!

I'm happy to announce the launch of iGoogle game themes. These themes offer our users new iGoogle backdrops inspired by their favorite video games, including classics like "Mario" and "Mega Man" and new sensations like "Wii Sports" and "Spore." Like our <a title="iGoogle artist themes" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-art-thou.html" id="m_na">iGoogle artist themes</a>, <a title="fashion and music themes" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-eye-candy-for-igoogle.html" id="jc5v">fashion and music themes</a> and <a title="themes for causes" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/creating-change-with-your-homepage.html" id="dqgk">themes for causes</a>, we hope that the game themes delight our users and reflect their personal interests. As you can imagine, these themes in particular have captivated our iGoogle software engineers who are gamers themselves. I'll now turn the post over to one of our engineers who worked closely on the project, Matthew Chan, for more details. A gamer's POV I confess, I'm a game geek. My first experience with video games was spending hours and hours (not to mention my weekly allowance) playing "Donkey Kong" and "Galaga" at a nearby arcade until my fingers ached. These days I no longer have to ride my bike to the neighborhood arcade to play video games — I can do it in the comfort of my own home anytime I want! And even better... starting today, I can have images of my favorite childhood games right on my iGoogle page. iGoogle now has graphics from all sorts of games that I know will excite my fellow gamers. Picture your homepage with "Burnout" cars zooming in the background, Ryu from "Street Fighter" blasting hadoukens across your page, or rock stars jamming out to tunes from "Guitar Hero." It doesn't end there. For those of you who used to dream about completing the Triforce or getting out of tombs alive, choose from "Zelda" or "Tomb Raider." Want more? Try "Dungeons & Dragons," "The Sims 3," or "World of Warcraft" on for size. So come check out the new game themes (<a href="http://www.google.com/help/ig/gaming/">www.google.com/gamingthemes</a>) and choose your favorite one. If you can't decide, no worries. Just add the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?type=themes&url=skins/games_sampler.xml" id="wbrp" title="game theme of the day">game theme of the day</a> and enjoy seeing a different one on your iGoogle page every day. Here's a look at the themes in action: <object height="350" width="425"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TzFPOHmrt2Q"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TzFPOHmrt2Q" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="425"></embed> </object> Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience, and Matthew Chan, iGoogle engineer

iGoogle's got game... themes!

I'm happy to announce the launch of iGoogle game themes. These themes offer our users new iGoogle backdrops inspired by their favorite v...

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Google, at your service

It used to be that creating a webpage was a pursuit reserved for the truly tech-savvy, requiring a geek's expertise in HTML, Java, or C++ coding. These days, it's a different story. Working with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_hosting_service">hosting service</a> has made things a great deal easier, as they can help you reserve a name for your site (www.[insertyournamehere].com), and they often provide tools to help get you set up, with minimal to zero programming experience required. Today, we're releasing <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/provider/">Google Services for Websites</a>, a few more tools that your hosting company can now enable to help you improve your website. This expanded program includes Webmaster Tools, AdSense, Custom Search, and Site Search, making it easier to drive traffic to your site, monetize your site through the Google ad network, and add various search capabilities to help your visitors find information on your site faster. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwRgngGtX7sRpHltymHS1zjSD6aIfc0vO8GnTCnNMEUY7MV0zOL5mPsfY5cJ-QZUix0SnACoAzLjKKv0pZM8aRp3lc4ONM-mMJJbPxrdKZ5AE_szhf_HSz8DFqJhbifJVZmHXQXk5NOdTy/s1600-h/Fatcow.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317258453625747218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwRgngGtX7sRpHltymHS1zjSD6aIfc0vO8GnTCnNMEUY7MV0zOL5mPsfY5cJ-QZUix0SnACoAzLjKKv0pZM8aRp3lc4ONM-mMJJbPxrdKZ5AE_szhf_HSz8DFqJhbifJVZmHXQXk5NOdTy/s400/Fatcow.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 329px;" /></a> For more information, check out our <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-services-for-websites-expands-to.html">Enterprise Blog</a>, <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/03/making-more-tools-available-with-just.html">Webmasters Blog</a> and <a href="http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-services-for-websites-includes.html">Custom Search Blog</a>. And if your hosting service doesn't have Google Services for Websites yet, send them to <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/provider/">this page</a>. We hope you find these new tools helpful. Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager

Google, at your service

It used to be that creating a webpage was a pursuit reserved for the truly tech-savvy, requiring a geek's expertise in HTML, Java, or C+...

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Google's 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit

Our <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Brandschenkestrasse+110+8002+Z%C3%BCrich+Switzerland&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=ZszHSdWIDYKOsQPen6HgBg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title">Zurich office</a> was proud to host Google's second annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions) Faculty Summit last month. Eighty leading academics joined us from 66 universities in 24 countries for this three-day event. The Faculty Summit's purpose is to increase collaboration between key universities and our engineering teams. This year, we organised more than 40 talks and presentations, plus panels, networking and social events to help our guests learn more about Google's work in their regions. In return, Googlers gained valuable insight into challenges faced by the region's universities and new developments in the academic world. Event highlights included a keynote by leading cryptographer and Turing Award winner Adi Shamir on the topic of privacy and security as related to cloud computing. Further discussion centered on topics ranging from the power and limitations of cryptographic technology to usability issues introduced by security requirements, with some debate over the balance between preventing abuse and identifying and reporting abusers. <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#spector">Alfred Spector</a> (VP of Research), Jeff Walz (University Relations) and I spoke about Google's engineering efforts and the impact of our university relations initiatives, with much discussion focusing on our involvement in the Arab and African regions. Rapidly expanding markets in the Middle East and Africa represent a major engineering challenge for us, and we are eager to continue collaboration with leading academic attendees from the region well beyond the Summit. We were pleased to welcome representatives from the Al Arabiya news channel, who highlighted this topic in a recent broadcast. We also heard from Google 'Research Award' and 'CS4HS' (Computer Science for High School) grant recipients and EMEA-based academics spending long-term sabbaticals at Google, who described their experiences over the past year. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloocDo1m14fgSPaeNRYTo-Szsh-F6yokTKe1FmDIrmBc-sAorh0S417luit-NlQNDiEamCOfL5JYj1XyFX1LsHfr1g4mVN6UtmGg8yNoSsbNvINoRVN0BnYWZOeYvxPh4vQGy6MDcYLi8/s1600-h/_mg_6766.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317164078926582530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloocDo1m14fgSPaeNRYTo-Szsh-F6yokTKe1FmDIrmBc-sAorh0S417luit-NlQNDiEamCOfL5JYj1XyFX1LsHfr1g4mVN6UtmGg8yNoSsbNvINoRVN0BnYWZOeYvxPh4vQGy6MDcYLi8/s400/_mg_6766.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a> This year also saw new additions to the Faculty Summit agenda, including a networking session allowing academics to discuss collaboration options one-on-one with specific Google engineers. This session spurred a great deal of activity — for instance, multiple Googlers are booked to deliver guest lectures at external events and universities and several attendees have been invited to present their findings on research ranging from 'Software Visualisation' to 'Mobile Agile Testing' at Google engineering offices across EMEA. We plan to make these networking sessions a focal point at future Faculty Summits! I'd like to thank the organising team for their help in planning and executing this important event for the second year running. The 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit proved to be an incisive and informative event resulting in new academic and industrial collaborations. We look forward to reporting back on these synergies as they develop over the next year! Posted by Nelson Mattos, VP of Engineering

Google's 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit

Our Zurich office was proud to host Google's second annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions) Faculty Summit last month. Ei...

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BLOGSCAN - The Mysterious Disappearance of a Report Critical of Industry Funding of CME

On the Carlat Psychiatry Blog, Dr Daniel Carlat <a href="http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2009/03/ama-ethics-and-404-not-found.html">discussed</a> the mysterious disappearance of a report by the AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) which recommended the end of commercial funding of continuing medical education (CME). The report was tabled, and is now no longer available on the AMA web-site. (Although, it has not completely vanished off the webs. See the comments on Dr Carlat's post.) Meanwhile, the AMA has posted a series of "fact sheets" from their <a href="http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/continuing-medical-education/events/national-task-force-cme-provider-industry.shtml">National Task Force on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration</a> which seem notably friendly to "collaboration" among educators and industry.

BLOGSCAN - The Mysterious Disappearance of a Report Critical of Industry Funding of CME

On the Carlat Psychiatry Blog, Dr Daniel Carlat discussed the mysterious disappearance of a report by the AMA's Council on Ethical and ...

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Citizen participation that scales: a call to action

At Google we hold weekly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_hall_meeting">town hall</a>-style meetings with our founders, CEO, and guest speakers, which always feature a Q&A session. Managing Q&A is a unique challenge with an audience of thousands, in offices around the world, who inevitably want to ask more questions than we have time to answer. To help address this challenge, we developed <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/">Google Moderator</a>, built on <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">App Engine</a>. Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones they want answered. And thanks to the scale that App Engine provides, this application can now support tens of thousands of people at once. This gives everyone the chance to be heard in a way that gives priority to the issues that matter most to the broader group. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJm_Hzc6Yg">As you may have heard</a>, the White House is hosting an online town hall meeting on Thursday and has asked people to submit questions for the president and vote on which ones they think he should answer. We think technology can be a force for greater accountability and access between citizens and their elected officials. We're excited that the White House has chosen to use the power of cloud-based applications like Google Moderator and App Engine to scale the president's direct dialogue with the American people. To take part in this experiment in citizen participation, please visit: <a href="http://whitehouse.gov/OpenForQuestions">http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions</a> Posted by Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering

Citizen participation that scales: a call to action

At Google we hold weekly town hall -style meetings with our founders, CEO, and guest speakers, which always feature a Q&A session. Manag...

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Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless" Clause - The Largest IT Industry Abuse Ever?

Dear fellow physicians, nurses and other clinicians: You thought frivolous medical malpractice suits were a problem? Guess what: It's worse. Along with your patients you are nonconsented beta testers and experimental subjects of the health IT industry, and potential victims of the computer industry's arrogance and dysfunction. In the remarkable article <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/301/12/1276">Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless" Clause - Implications for Patients and Clinicians</a>, Ross Koppel and David Kreda, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2009;301(12):1276-1278, we learn that: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">Healthcare information technology (HIT) vendors enjoy a contractual and legal structure that renders them virtually liability-free—“held harmless” is the term-of-art—even when their proprietary products may be implicated in adverse events involving patients. This contractual and legal device shifts liability and remedial burdens to physicians, nurses, hospitals, and clinics, even when these HIT users are strictly following vendor instructions...HIT vendors are not responsible for errors their systems introduce in patient treatment because physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and healthcare technicians should be able to identify—and correct—any errors generated by software faults. [Yes - we're all knowing magicians with the power to read minds, infer incorrect lab values via therapeutic touch, and possess encyclopedic knowledge in our heads at all times. This raises the question: if we are that omniscient to be able to identify and correct software faults with 100 percent accuracy to avoid patient harm, then why do we need electronic medical records at all? - ed.] </blockquote> Also see the Univ. of Pennsylvania press release "Why Are Healthcare Information Manufacturers Free of All Liability When Their Products Can Result in Medical Errors?" <a href="http://sev.prnewswire.com/null/20090324/DC8755624032009-1.html">here</a>. In the new Koppel and Kreda JAMA article we also learn that: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">HIT implementations are massively complex, and are fraught with delays, errors, resistance, work process redesign, frustration, and outright failure. Healthcare facilities cannot predict the myriad scenarios in which software failures could result in patient harm and liability, and they are not likely to be knowledgeable a priori about frequent vendor updates.</blockquote> We additionally learn that: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">The significant disparity between buyers and sellers in knowledge and resources [about healthcare IT problems] is profound and consequential. Vendors retain company confidential knowledge about designs, faults, software-operations, and glitches. Their counsel have crafted contractual terms that absolve them of liability and other punitive strictures while compelling users’ non-disclosure of their systems’ problematic, or even disastrous, software faults. [This is simply astonishing. In other words, health IT customers and users have a gag order imposed on them regarding software faults and defects, while clinicians -- through their ingenuity, their labor in finding defect workarounds, and their liability -- serve (as I've written) as captive beta testers and an insurance company for HIT vendors - ed.] </blockquote> These observations are nothing short of astonishing. They do help explain, however, the near silence of hospitals and their executives regarding healthcare IT faults, an observation I made in this 2006 AMIA presentation about the scarcity of such information: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">Access Patterns to a Website on Healthcare IT Failure (<a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/content/documents/AMIA2006_poster.pdf">Abstract</a> [pdf], <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/content/documents/FINAL_Healthcare%20IT%20Failure_Oct_19_2006.ppt">Poster</a> [ppt].)</blockquote> The Joint Commission also made this observation in their Dec. 2008 <a href="http://www.jointcommission.org/SentinelEvents/SentinelEventAlert/sea_42.htm">Sentinel Events Alert on Health IT</a>: <blockquote>There is a dearth of data on the incidence of adverse events directly caused by HIT overall. </blockquote> The new JAMA article may also explain why HIT is so often done so poorly as to present a mission hostile user experience, as I started to write about a decade ago at my healthcare IT difficulties website <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/">here</a>, as I outlined in an eight part series starting <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/02/are-health-it-designers-idiots-part-1.html">here</a>, as the American College of Physician Executives noted <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/health-it-industry-out-of-control.html">here</a>, as the National Research Council noted <a href="http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12572">here</a> ("Current Approaches to US Healthcare IT are Insufficient"), and as many others noted as well: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">Healthcare IT News (3/10, Merrill) reported, a survey conducted by the American College of Physician Executives found "that although more physician leaders are using healthcare information technology, they still find it clunky and unresponsive to their needs." The survey of 1,000 ACPE members "revealed that the biggest source of frustration is a lack of input from physicians when designing and implementing healthcare information technology systems. Many said involving clinicians at the planning stages would pre-empt many of the problems that crop up later." One respondent noted that "systems are chosen according to administrative criteria rather than what physicians need."</blockquote> Without accountability, a manufacturer is unmotivated to produce quality products at the expense of profits. They become complacent and lazy. This is an excellent reason why major HIT applications are as abhorrent as they are and violate so many fundamental principles of human computer interaction and resilience engineering. It can also explain why talent management within the vendors is biased against hiring medical informatics experts, who would resist intellectual laziness of their non-informatics profit oriented (and unaccountable) counterparts. Koppel and Kreda note that such stipulations defeat patient safety efforts and are contrary to the principles of evidence based medicine. I can add that such stipulations are contrary to the principles of good engineering. These stipulations further instantiate my observation that health IT lacks the rigor of medical science itself, its major Achilles heel. This is one reason why I believe a national HIT initiative at this point in time is going to be, <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubacc/153/15304.htm">as in the UK</a>, nothing short of an expensive debacle. The existence of "hold harmless" clauses and gag orders raises many questions: <ul><li>Clinical supervisors of other physicians are indeed practicing medicine. Are Health IT vendors in fact practicing medicine by cybernetic proxy via these IT systems? </li><li>Aren't the vendors' own claims of revolutionary healthcare quality improvements mediated via EMR's, alerts and reminders, clinical decision support, etc., malfunctions of which physicians may be held liable, prima facie evidence that the vendors are in fact practicing medicine by proxy? </li><li>Should not these purveyors of cybernetic (i.e., virtual) medical devices be held accountable for their products, as in the pharmaceutical and the non-cybernetic (i.e., physical) medical device industries? </li><li>How did such a situation regarding critical healthcare devices arise?</li><li>In what other healthcare or other technology intensive industries, if any, do similar conditions exist, and what are the repercussions? </li><li>How long has this situation existed?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by clinicians?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by clinical leaders?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by medical professional societies, such as the AMA, the ACPE, etc., supposedly representing their members' interests?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by hospitals and their executive leadership and boards of directors?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by IS departments in hospitals?</li><li>Why is it tolerated by hospital general counsel?</li><li>Are there possible civil tort/RICO (racketeering)/criminal implications regarding patients injured by defective health IT where defects were known but not disclosed?</li><li>Is not such a protective arrangement prima facie evidence that this technology is indeed experimental, with patients and clinicians as unconsented experimental subjects? </li><li>Why is it tolerated by our government?</li></ul> Regarding the last point, the Obama administration has promised an atmosphere of national accountability and responsibility. Why, then, has it simultaneously employed the coercive force of government (payment penalties for HIT non adopters after the absurdly short period of five years from now, 2014) to push an exploratory medical device from an unaccountable industry of unproven ROI at a cost of tens of billions of dollars on to the medical profession? This reality raises another question as I suggested in my <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/02/medinformaticsmd-in-wall-street-journal.html">WSJ Letter to the Editor</a> of February 18, 2009. I wrote: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">Dear Wall Street Journal:You observe that the true political goal is socialized medicine facilitated by health care information technology. You note that the public is being deceived, as the rules behind this takeover were stealthily inserted in the stimulus bill. I have a different view on who is deceiving whom. In fact, it is the government that has been deceived by the HIT industry and its pundits. Stated directly, the administration is deluded about the true difficulty of making large-scale health IT work. The beneficiaries will largely be the IT industry and IT management consultants.</blockquote> In other words, was the administration misled by the health IT industry? I believe it might have been. As an example, Mr. Obama's healthcare IT policy campaign adviser <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/01/26/allscripts-ceo-urges-one-two-punch-on-electronic-medical-records/">per the WSJ</a> Glen Tullman, CEO of HIT vendor AllScripts and Board member of the industry-created government contractor CCHIT ("Certification Commission for Healthcare IT"), probably didn't tell Mr. Obama his company was selling goods that did not function properly. (Here is a link to my organization's <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/DUCOM_EMR_Complaint.pdf">Civil Complaint against AllScripts</a>, PDF). We apparently cannot know how many other organizations had their own complaints that might not have made it into litigation, due to the aforementioned gag orders. (Ironically, I found out about the lawsuit at my own organization only through an anonymous comment at the HIT gossip site <a href="http://histalk.blog-city.com/news_051607.htm">HISTalk</a>.) Incidentally, by matter of pure speculation, I was not permitted involvement in that implementation despite having been a pioneering CMIO at a larger healthcare system years prior and the only formally educated medical informaticist at my organization. My writings on health IT dysfunction were well known to the IT staff and likely the vendor after a short web search; it would have been in the vendors' interests to keep me away from sales and implementation of known deficient health IT. Again, this is simply speculation. On the other hand, I am aware of major healthcare organizations with "portfolios" of hundreds or thousands of issues and defects awaiting remediation, and CMIO's struggling against cavalier bureaucracies who want the doctors even in critical care areas to live with the problems, and vendors who are not in a hurry to fix their products. Some of the problems rise to the level of critical with regard to patient safety. Under contract, the problems cannot be disclosed to the public, to patients whose care might fall under the aegis of these systems, or to other healthcare organizations seeking the same systems. I hope to be a plaintiff's witness when the inevitable lawsuits for patient injury place such capricious vendor, hospital and IT leadership on the witness stand. Finally, in fairness the JAMA article discusses issues beyond the vendors' control such as misuse or poor training done by the host organization using the IT. Possible remedies to the situation of unaccountability for the outcomes of HIT misdesign, malfunction and other defects are outlined in the article. See it or the press release at the above links if you lack JAMA access. As I've written numerous times on this site, due to the implications and especially now due to the revelation that the scarcity of adverse events information related to HIT is probably by design, I favor stringent health IT regulation <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/lets-deregulate-pharma-information.html">as in pharmaceutical IT</a>. Whatever happens, however, I know this. For the sake of patient safety: <div style="text-align: left;">This sorry, abusive and inexcusable travesty must end ... now. </div> Finally, to health IT vendors, as my early medical mentor, pioneering cardiovascular surgeon and educator Victor P. Satinsky, MD might have said: If you can't take the heat of the responsibilities of clinical medicine, then get out of our kitchen. -- SS

Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless" Clause - The Largest IT Industry Abuse Ever?

Dear fellow physicians, nurses and other clinicians: You thought frivolous medical malpractice suits were a problem? Guess what: It's wo...

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Two new improvements to Google results pages

Today we're rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions -- both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need. More and better search refinements Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page). For example, if you search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=principles+of+physics" id="m9yf" title="principles of physics">principles of physics</a>], our algorithms understand that "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" are related terms that could help you find what you need. Here's an example (click on the images in the post to view them larger): <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKS5-M37xQav-4XE78L8LwbW-7HnyLTXuRR3OR-qgTdAf9myLkGZjTt94kaNY178O1UZLv-Eob_RAhg1X2Y0AHhIQVX8ObBhZYcKUVQYe6PvUyYp3TlgGQtk9r2xpqoLxNkwb39KnNWCS/s1600-h/Picture+5.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316754908836560034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKS5-M37xQav-4XE78L8LwbW-7HnyLTXuRR3OR-qgTdAf9myLkGZjTt94kaNY178O1UZLv-Eob_RAhg1X2Y0AHhIQVX8ObBhZYcKUVQYe6PvUyYp3TlgGQtk9r2xpqoLxNkwb39KnNWCS/s400/Picture+5.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 177px;" /></a>Let's look at a couple of examples in other languages. In Russian, for the query [<a href="http://www.google.ru/search?hl=ru&q=%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%85" id="crp4" title="гадание на картах">гадание на картах</a>] (fortune-telling with cards), the algorithms find the related terms "таро" (tarot), "ленорман" (lenormand) and "тибетское гадание мо" (tibetan divination mo). In Italian, if you search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=it&q=surf+alle+canarie" id="pmxj" title="surf alle canarie">surf alle canarie</a>] (surf at the canary islands), we now offer suggestions based on the three most famous Canary Islands: "lanzarote," "gran canaria," and "fuerteventura": <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo64eF-Sn4mXoAzWCEIFCKLICLqCektnrO1WwRtayOkxyf_j_JfU6QM6pNOz1r4IygOMF7tfG1HOh12AKW4Y0odjmDh4xZo8Ol1algClS5ngN0SF0DXosHfx1n4Z2DBVC4-dHjWrQGxA2L/s1600-h/Picture+6.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316755205123011730" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo64eF-Sn4mXoAzWCEIFCKLICLqCektnrO1WwRtayOkxyf_j_JfU6QM6pNOz1r4IygOMF7tfG1HOh12AKW4Y0odjmDh4xZo8Ol1algClS5ngN0SF0DXosHfx1n4Z2DBVC4-dHjWrQGxA2L/s400/Picture+6.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 232px;" /></a>We are now able to target more queries, more languages, and make our suggestions more relevant to what you actually need to know. Additionally, we're now offering refinements for longer queries — something that's usually a challenging task. You'll be able to see our new related searches starting today in 37 languages all around the world. And speaking of long queries, that leads us to our next improvement... Longer snippets When you do a search on Google, each result we give you starts with a dark blue title and is followed by a few lines of text (what we call a "snippet"), which together give you an idea of what each page is about. To give more context, the snippet shows how the words of your query appear on the page by highlighting them in bold. When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page. Below are a couple of examples. Suppose you were looking for information about Earth's rotation around the sun, and specifically wanted to know about its tilt and distance from the sun. So you type all of that into Google: [earth's rotation axis tilt and distance from sun]. A normal-length snippet wouldn't be able to show you the context for all of those words, but with longer snippets you can be sure that the first result covers all those topics. In addition, the extra line of snippets for the third result shows the word "sun" in context, suggesting that the page doesn't talk about Earth's distance from the sun: <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi821rOPwKFqRKsUY_YOuXiELw0iY8gjBM8MKT3wwnNK4GH5l3ZjYZrcrBKiMFCivQbK-1WM3PfX1ecap9ukOSbHjH5MxBm_PBFM3JCXDM3bgfpvt3_FsGJDN70_12rINzqPkR00Tkt12Ge/s1600-h/Picture+7.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316755430475690962" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi821rOPwKFqRKsUY_YOuXiELw0iY8gjBM8MKT3wwnNK4GH5l3ZjYZrcrBKiMFCivQbK-1WM3PfX1ecap9ukOSbHjH5MxBm_PBFM3JCXDM3bgfpvt3_FsGJDN70_12rINzqPkR00Tkt12Ge/s400/Picture+7.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 242px;" /></a>Similarly, if you're looking for a restaurant review that covers all the parts of the meal, longer snippets can help: <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLwcTE17ciQgnNo6n8wcAj0ORHqwhRaYG21PfcMw-SGlZf7Cfn_XA0QJRTFxsVF9g3P9ljoltEfD9D83tsMHhu93wEkKMfqIBsBXv8I8AXhbsh0iSkdc0wfxIuciX0ehY4pLfTRDsc5fU/s1600-h/Picture+8.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316755749449536610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLwcTE17ciQgnNo6n8wcAj0ORHqwhRaYG21PfcMw-SGlZf7Cfn_XA0QJRTFxsVF9g3P9ljoltEfD9D83tsMHhu93wEkKMfqIBsBXv8I8AXhbsh0iSkdc0wfxIuciX0ehY4pLfTRDsc5fU/s400/Picture+8.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 221px;" /></a>But don't just take our word for it — try it out yourself with your favorite long, detailed query. These are just two recent examples of improvements we've made. We are constantly looking for ways to get you to the web page you want as quickly as possible. Even if you don't notice all of our changes, rest assured we're hard at work making sure you have the highest quality search experience possible. Posted by Ori Allon, Technical Lead, Search Quality Team, and Ken Wilder, Snippets Team Engineer

Two new improvements to Google results pages

Today we're rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the seco...

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