This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Searches come in many flavors, but it's our job to determine what type of search you're doing once you've clicked your way out of the search box. Whether you're looking for a blog or a business, our goal is to get you the most relevant type of result back to you—fast. Ultimately, it's that combination of relevance and speed that we think will give you the best experience. Here are some of our newest search enhancements:

Improved Blog Search
With the proliferation of specialized blogs all across the web, you'll often find great content on blogs—whether you're planning a trip to Florida, looking to bring home a new golden retriever or learning how to make a delicious Italian dinner. Recently, our blog search team made it much easier to find full blogs about your query, rather than single posts on the topic. This is especially useful if you're looking for bloggers that post on an ongoing basis about the subject of your query. Try it with one of your search queries by clicking "Blogs," then "Homepages," in the left-hand panel of your search results.

Example searches: [tesla car], [google], [android]

A new home for Realtime Search
When we think about relevancy, often what you're looking for may have just happened. It's been more than nine months since we first announced our real-time search features, and this week we gave it a new home at www.google.com/realtime as well as some great new tools to you refine and understand your results. You can use geographic refinements to find updates and news that's happening right near you or in the area of your choice. We also added conversations view, so you can follow a discussion more easily by browsing a full timeline of tweets and seeing how the conversation evolved. And in Google Alerts, you can now create an alert specifically for "updates" to get an email the moment a topic of interest shows up on Twitter or other short-form services.

Realtime Search and updates in Google Alerts are available globally in 40 languages, and the geographic refinements and conversations views are available in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

Example search: [egg recall]

More local results in maps and clickable markers
We made some changes to local results in web search that will help you learn more about the results and save you time by saving you clicks. Starting this week, when you search for places we'll show you all of the results that match your query on the map. Results after the first seven will be shown with small circle markers. This can be very useful in identifying the density of stores and helping you find the right neighborhood to visit. For example, when you search for [fabric stores nyc], you can now easily identify the Garment District:

When you see a result on the map that you like, you can now click directly on the marker (the pin or the circle) and go to Google Maps with that place selected and the "Info" window open. The other results will still be there if you want to explore more places.

Example searches: [fabric stores nyc], [coffee in seattle], [resort near ko samui, thailand]

We hope you find these updates useful. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management

Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you’re searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country? We’re introducing a new way to find out—a regular video series called the Google Beat that highlights some of the hottest searches on Google in the U.S.

Using data from Google Trends, Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. You’ve probably seen our previous deep dives into Google search trends, like our annual year-end Zeitgeist and posts here about search trends related to events like the World Cup, the Oscars® and beyond. Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what’s popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October’s “balloon boy” or Steven Slater). We’re looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal.

Check out this week’s premier video below, and subscribe to the Google Beat YouTube channel to get regular updates. We hope you enjoy.



Posted by Emily Wood, Editor, Google Blog team

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.



Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.


We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant, to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.

If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re not a U.S. based user—or if you’re using Google Apps for your school or business—then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly—so stay tuned!

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.

Update Aug 26: This has now been rolled out to everyone in the U.S. If you don't see the feature yet, try logging out of Gmail and signing back in.

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer

When we first introduced our real-time search features last December, we focused on bringing relevance to the freshest information on the web. Our goal was to provide real-time content from a comprehensive set of sources, integrated right into your usual search results. Today we’re making our most significant enhancements to date, giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools to help you find what you need. Now you can access Google Realtime Search at its own address, www.google.com/realtime (the page is rolling out now and should be available soon. Use this link if you want to try out the new features right away).

On the new homepage you’ll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you’re traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are.

In addition, we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed.

Finally, we’ve also added updates content to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing. Now you can create an alert specifically for “updates” to get an email the moment your topic appears on Twitter or other short-form services. Or, if you want to manage your email volume, you can set alerts to email you once per day or week.

Check out our demo video of the new features and quick tips on how to use them:



You can access Realtime Search by typing www.google.com/realtime directly into your browser, or clicking the “Updates” link in the left-hand panel of your search results. Set up your Google Alerts at www.google.com/alerts. Realtime Search and updates in Google Alerts are available globally in 40 languages, and the geographic refinements and conversations views are available in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. The features are rolling out now, but you can use this link to see them right away.

Posted by Dylan Casey, Product Manager

Our sixth annual Google Summer of Code program has wrapped up and we want to highlight some of this year’s amazing participants and projects. Summer of Code offers students developers all over the world the chance to get paid to write code for open source projects as an alternative to a summer job.

Kicked off in 2005, the Summer of Code has brought together more than 3,400 students with more than 200 open source projects from all over the world to create millions of lines of code. We work with several open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects through three months of coding.

There was some really awesome work done by more than 1,000 students from 69 countries in this year’s Summer of Code. Of those students, 6.5 percent were women representing 23 countries—six times higher than the estimated proportion of women in the open source community. Here are just a few of the women:

25 reference manuals in her purse
Ann Marie Horcher, an information systems security Ph.D. candidate at Nova Southeastern University was mentored by Docbook.org. Ann Marie worked over the summer to create an application that transformed a docbook file to epub format used in ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Noble Nook and the iPad. As a result of Ann Marie’s project, it’s now easier to move technical documentation to a portable format so she “can carry my 25 reference manuals for my project with me in my purse.” And now, so can everyone else.

Check out Ann Marie’s YouTube video illustrating her work and its results here.

Geophylogenies now displayed on Google Earth
Kathryn Iverson, a University of Michigan bioinformatics graduate student was mentored by National Evolutionary Biology Synthesis Center and wrote a library implemented in Java with KML to build geophylogenies—geographical evolutionary histories of organisms. She told us: "Since I was starting from scratch it was up to me to decide in what direction I should move the project and make decisions about everything from what input filetypes to support to the color and size of the geophylogenies when they are displayed in Google Earth."


When asked about her key takeaways, she said, "Working remotely required me to be clear and verbose about what I needed because with the time difference (my mentor was on the other side of the globe), I may not get a response until the next day, which can slow down work tremendously if you're not clear in asking your questions."

Bridesmaid brings word tag clouds to biological networks
Layla Oesper, a Brown University computer science Ph.D. candidate mentored by Cytoscape, was attracted to Summer of Code because she was looking for a summer job that would give her the flexibility to work and still participate in two weddings. Layla built a plugin for Cytoscape that would allow people to create word tag clouds from biological networks they’d already created in Cytoscape, giving users a visual semantic summary of a biological network. The final product has all sorts of configurable features, including the ability to cluster together words that appear near each other in the original network in the order in which the words appear.

Check out what Layla learned during her Summer of Code experience on YouTube.

Drupal gets more content management friendly
Emily Brand, a computer science graduate student from Loyola University Chicago, was mentored by Drupal.org, an open source content management platform. During her summer, she worked on QueryPath—an essential part of the Drupal and PHP communities. Her goal was to keep and increase Drupal’s popularity by making it a go-to content management system for websites focused on web services using PHP.

Emily says she learned “how to effectively work on an open source project while keeping and improving the users and developers requirements as well as how to effectively integrate web services in Drupal.”


You can find out more about this year’s program and projects on the Open Source Blog, and if you’re in college looking to write some open source code, we hope we’ll see you next summer.

Posted by Carol Smith, Open Source Programs Manager

About a week ago, we hosted more than 130 Google Scholarship recipients in our Beijing office. These outstanding undergraduates and graduate students in computer science and software engineering from more than 20 universities across China were the recipients of the Google Excellence Scholarship and the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship—our first scholarships in China. The students participated in an awards ceremony and toured the Google office.

The Google Excellence Scholarship aims to award the outstanding undergraduates and master degree students from the computer science and software engineering disciplines. It has been set up at 20 top universities in China, with five awardees for each university—three undergraduates and two graduates.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship supports outstanding female students in computer science, including undergraduates, master's degree students and Ph.D. students, at five top universities. There are six awardees for each university (three undergrads and three graduate students), as well as three awardees from Taiwan.

Google has been collaborating with Chinese universities for a long time through a variety of programs—ranging from curriculum development, donations, to today’s scholarship program—to support the education of talented students in China. And we'll extend into other university collaboration programs in the future.

Congratulations to all the Google Scholarship recipients! And if you read Chinese, check out our corresponding post on the Google China Blog.

Google Scholarship Universities for 2010:
Beihang University, Beijing Normal University, Fudan University*, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Nankai University, Peking University*, Renmin University of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University*, Shandong University, South China University of Technology, Southeastern University, Sun Yat-sen University*, Tianjin University, Tongji University, Tsinghua University*, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, Wuhan University

*Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Program universities

Posted by Kathy Deng, Google University Relations

Government police shutting down farmer’s protests in China. A tobacco company employing under-age workers in Kazakhstan. Iranian merchants striking to protest tax increases in Tehran. We've seen stories like these on our computers and phones every day, and YouTube has been documenting many of them on our breaking news feed on Citizentube over the past few months. Videos like these are more than just breaking news images; they're often political statements meant to bring about change.

Earlier this summer YouTube started a blog series with WITNESS, a human rights video advocacy and training organization, examining the role of online video in human rights. So far we’ve talked about why video matters to human rights and how you can protect yourself and the people you film when uploading to YouTube.

Now we want to raise some key topics about the future of human rights video online, and to hear your thoughts and ideas in a special Moderator series that we've set up. Read more about this project on the YouTube blog.

Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics, YouTube, and Sameer Padania for WITNESS

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

Recently, a group of Google product managers challenged one another to run 100 miles over 30 days in the interest of encouraging summer fitness. I grew up in Huntsville, AL, where I always loved exercising and experiencing the great outdoors, so I took to the challenge immediately. One hundred and thirty-three miles and a few pairs of new running shoes later, it was an incredible opportunity to push myself further than I’d ever imagined. But, I must admit—it wasn’t easy.

I’m delighted to help introduce our latest Search Story, Healthy Habits. This is a story of one woman’s journey to get back into shape. It shows the difficulties of sticking to a workout routine, and the empowerment that comes with reaching—and even exceeding your goals. It highlights the many tools and tricks that make Google a great workout companion, and I hope it inspires you to incorporate new healthy habits into your own lifestyle.



Enjoy this week’s video, and don’t forget to check out the other videos if you haven’t already. Search (and run) on!

Update Aug 20: Some of you may have had trouble watching this video due to "restricted" messages, especially if you're reading this post in a feed reader. We're working to resolve the issue now—in the meantime, you can still watch on the blog itself or directly on YouTube. -Ed.Update Aug 20, 3:00 PM PST: The video should be viewable everywhere now. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Avni Shah, Group Product Manager, Geo

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last few weeks, we made it easier to find more kinds of information in Gmail as well as use multiple Gmail accounts at once. Google Docs and Google Sites both added new features, and we released improved tools to move existing data to Google Apps.

Find docs and sites quickly from Gmail
On Wednesday we cooked up our newest Labs feature in Gmail—a more powerful version of Gmail’s search feature. Now, not only can you search for messages and chats, you can also search for information in Google Docs and Google Sites from your inbox. This is a big time-saver when you don’t remember where the information you’re looking for is saved. We also recently added the ability to drag attachments from Gmail to your desktop if you use Google Chrome.

Use multiple Gmail accounts at once
Life is now easier for people with multiple Gmail accounts. With the new multiple sign-in feature, you can toggle back and forth between accounts, or even have Gmail open in two tabs with different accounts. To learn more about this feature for advanced users, head over to the Gmail Blog.

Improvements to documents, spreadsheets and drawings in Google Docs
We rolled out a rapid-fire string of useful features for Google Docs over the last couple weeks, including alternate page sizes and resizable tables in documents, spell checking in spreadsheets, and a new curve rendering tool in drawings. All these features make creating and collaborating with others in real-time on documents, spreadsheets and drawings easier.


New site navigation choices in Google Sites
Google Sites got in on the action this week too, with the ability to add horizontal navigation buttons, tabs or links to your sites. We also added the option to include a site-wide footer on your pages, and made it easier for people to open embedded documents in a new tab where users with access can make edits.


App Tuesday: Nine new additions to the Apps Marketplace
For organizations, a key advantage of Google Apps is immediate access to productivity-enhancing innovations from third-party software companies. This month, nine new applications were added to the Apps Marketplace. Instead of struggling with patches and updates each month, Google Apps customers can activate new functionality with just a couple clicks.

Who’s gone Google?
We have a long list of new customers to share who have recently switched to Google Apps. A warm welcome goes out to Roberto Cavalli, HÔM Real Estate Group, Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss, Bergelectric, the cities of Westerville and Wooster in Ohio, as well as the State of Maryland, which will be making Google Apps available to all 1.4 million of its K-12 and higher education students.

If your business or school is ready to “go Google”, we’re happy to report that making the switch is even easier with new data migration options. In addition to our existing tools to migrate email, contacts and calendar data from Microsoft Exchange, hosted Exchange and Lotus Notes, last week we simplified the process to migrate from IMAP systems and PST data files.

I hope these updates help you or your organization get even more from Google Apps. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. If you missed the rest of the stories this week, check them out—and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

Of all the great stories people send us, some simply make us laugh and appreciate even more why we’re in the search business. For our final post in our series of your Google stories, we’re sharing three tales that we found particularly funny and unique. We hope they make for good Friday summer reading. Enjoy!

Just last month, Trichelle wrote about how Google helped with the rediscovery of a lost wallet:

Received: 7/18/2010
From: Trichelle
This isn't really a question but a great story I thought Google would be interested in hearing. Today I called my daughter in St. Louis and found out her friends that were suppose to be coming to see her in St. Louis were stuck in Chicago because the driver's keys and wallet were lost. They searched everywhere cancelled credit cards and tried to have a new car key made....but without ID could not. The group was getting angry at Brandon the one who lost the keys and wallet, and my daughter in St. Louis was highly disappointed because her friends she hadn't seen in a long time were not going to be able to come see her. Well I'm in Perry Georgia and decided to google "Brandon [Brandon’s last name] wallet". And low and behold the first thing that comes up is a Chicago Craigslist entry telling Brandon his wallet had been found and where he could pick it up. I then called Brandon and he and his wallet were reunited and now the group is on the way to my daughter in St. Louis For the record, after the fact I tried Yahoo and Bing and no wallet. Google rocks!

On to the next:

From: Usman
You ever hear a song that you wish you knew the name of? Usually you can just Google a few key lyrics to find the answer, but when the song has no lyrics, one has to get creative. This was the case a few years ago when I was tasked with finding out the name of that famous circus/carnival music, you know, with the calliope, like, the clown music people usually hum in situations when someone's just done something silly.. you know, it kind of goes like "doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do?" Sorta? Of course it's more likely that you'd recognize the tune if I could whistle it to you. Except everyone I'd whistled to, despite recognizing the tune, had no clue what the name of the song was. So, on a whim, I googled it. That is, I went to Google Search, typed in "doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do" (without quotes, even!), clicked "I'm Feeling Lucky"—and guess what? It's called "Entrance of the Gladiators"—also known as "Thunder and Blazes" -- by Czech composer Julius Fučík. Good ear, Google, good ear.

And finally ...

From: Michelle
I'm a librarian and I use Google all day every day. Today I helped a senior citizen find the telephone number of the company that made her frying pan. Her frying pan handle had broke and she wanted it replaced. She had actually brought the frying pan into the library where I work, because it had been many years since she had purchased it and didn't know who the manufacturer was. I searched the words on the underside of the pan and not only found the manufacturer, but found that the pan had a 50 year guarantee! One satisfied Library patron, thanks to Google.

We hope you enjoyed these stories as much as we did. We’ll work hard on making Google even more helpful, so that you’ll keep ‘em coming!

Posted by Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management and the search team

Pakistan has been struck by the worst flooding in its recorded history. The latest estimate of the number of people affected by the flood exceeds 14 million—more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Critical infrastructure has been damaged over the last two weeks and clean water is in short supply. As monsoons approach, flooding is expected to worsen.

Our Crisis Response team has been working to use existing tools and build new ones to help the relief efforts. We just launched a page in Urdu and English where you can find information, resources and donation opportunities to help the victims of the floods. We’re also donating $250,000 to international and local NGOs to immediately aid in relief efforts. Although we’ve been able to provide satellite imagery for disasters in the past, cloud cover in Pakistan has prevented us from compiling useful imagery so far. We hope to share imagery as soon as possible.

We’ve already learned a lot about building useful tools from our previous efforts to help with disaster relief. Following the earthquake in Haiti, a small team of Googlers visited relief aid workers in Haiti to understand how we could further help. In observing and speaking with the relief aid workers, we learned that they needed up-to-date information about available resources (such as which field hospitals have X-ray machines or orthopedic surgeons), their location and contact information. Coordination between various health and relief facilities that spring up in a disaster zone can be challenging.

Based on what we learned in Haiti, we’ve been working to develop Resource Finder, a new tool to help disseminate updated information about which services various health facilities offer. It provides a map with editable records to help relief workers maintain up-to-date information on the services, doctors, equipment and beds available at neighboring health facilities so that they can efficiently arrange patient transfers. We normally wouldn’t release the tool so quickly, but decided to make an early release version of Resource Finder available for supporting relief efforts in Pakistan. This is the first time the tool is being launched during a disaster situation so we’ll be working closely with NGOs to understand its usefulness and will iterate accordingly.


We’ve also launched Person Finder in both Urdu and English for this disaster. This application allows individuals to check and post on the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster. Fortunately, we’ve heard that missing persons has not been as concerning an issue as it was during the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, but we’ll leave the application up regardless.

Responding to a disaster of this scale is a daunting task, but we can all do something to help. We will try to do our part and continue working with the many incredible NGOs to develop tools that help them work more effectively.

Posted by Ka-Ping Yee, Software Engineer, Google.org

Cross-posted on the YouTube blog.

There seems to be no hotter topic for discussion among Internet watchers these days than concerns over online free expression -- from the role of bloggers in advancing democratic movements, to sophisticated government censorship, to debates over how best to balance transparency with national security concerns. YouTube, Google and the Central European University will make our own contribution to the conversation at a major international conference we’re hosting in Budapest from September 20-22. We've invited grassroots activists, bloggers and vloggers from five continents, as well as representatives from NGOs, academia, industry and government to begin a long-term discussion about these issues and to form international working groups to promote practical change.

But a conversation about online free expression would be nothing without contributions from you. From election protests to government whistleblowing to grassroots advocacy, we’ve seen YouTube users upload, watch and share stories that would’ve never received global attention before the Internet era. That's why we're inviting you to submit your own video that answers this question:

"What's the biggest barrier to free expression on the Internet, and what would you do to overcome it?"
You can go to our Moderator series here to submit ideas and videos and/or to vote on your favorite contributions from others around the world.

Please participate by September 7, and we’ll showcase many of your responses at the conference in Budapest later in the month. We’ll also offer highlights from the dialogue on CitizenTube.

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Public Policy, and Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back tomorrow for the last post, and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

Like most search quality engineers at Google, the projects I work on revolve around helping people find information. The vast amount of content on the web makes this a daunting task—sometimes it feels like searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks. I've always thought one of the amazing abilities of search is how it can sift through that content to help make a connection that otherwise would never be made.

Because of this, some of my favorite search stories come from people who have used Google to reunite with loved ones and family members. It's inspiring to know that search has played a role in creating some of the most important moments in people's lives. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Willie met Elizabeth long before Google existed, but used search to find her 24 years later:

Received: 1/20/2010
From: Willie
I would like to thank you for helping to bring me together with my girlfriend. We hope you will enjoy hearing how your company played a part in our wonderful romance. Here's how it happened:

Elizabeth and I originally met in a club in 1986. We hit it off very well in that brief encounter but did not start a relationship at that time. Twenty-four years later, because she had made such a powerful impression, I still remembered Elizabeth well. I decided to try to contact her. I Googled her, using her name and hometown and was delighted to find her in the top spot. I emailed her, and we began an email and texting campaign. We were reunited several weeks later, fell in love soon after, and have been inseparable ever since. Thank you Google for enabling me to find my sweetheart all these years later!

Jennifer also used Google search to reunite with an old flame after 18 years:

Received: 1/8/2010
From: Jennifer
Twenty-one years ago I was an art student living in London. One day a friend talked me into having a beer after our painting class...little did I know that one decision would change my life forever. That afternoon we walked into a pub in Nottinghill and I saw a really cute guy having tea with a friend—he and I couldn't stop looking at each other! As I got up to leave, I told him he was “cute” so he asked me out. Because of my busy schedule at school we only had one date but I was absolutely smitten with him. (He used to slip love notes through my front door in the morning.) A few weeks later, I had to return to the US and I phoned him from Heathrow to say good-bye and that I was sorry I didn't get to spend more time with him. I had been busy with my final exams, but he just assumed I had been brushing him off which was not true! I was only 20 years old and I knew I had to go back home to the US, how could it possibly work?

Fast forward 18 years and I'm sitting in my apartment in NYC and thinking about my long lost Hans. I Googled his name and found him still living in London. I sent him an email and asked him if he remembered me. He wrote back and said “Yes” and that he would be traveling to NYC in two weeks and could we have dinner? Our first official date was Waldorf salad at the Waldorf Astoria. We discovered after all those years that the initial spark was still there. We dated back and forth between NYC and London for two years. Last year he moved back to the Netherlands and he asked me to join him a few months later. We got married on August 21, 2009.

And Adrian from the Netherlands was able to locate his biological mother using Google:

Received: 11/9/2009
From: Adrian
For many years I have been using Google as a search tool looking for my biological mother in Australia. In May 2009 a Google search led me to my mother's name on an Internet site. From there I was able to research and confirm that the name on the Google page was in fact my real mother. I made contact in June 2009 and we have been enjoying a wonderful reunion via email and telephone ever since. My mother is scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on December 12 2009 and after 43 years we get to meet each other in person for the fist time. My new-found mother will now be able to share Christmas with her new found family.

It isn't often that a mild-mannered software engineer gets to help two people find one another decades later or on different sides of an ocean. I appreciate both the opportunity to help make these connections and the people behind these stories for sharing them. Thanks, and keep on searching!

Posted by Bryan Horling, Software Engineer

Cross-posted on our Public Policy Blog.

Over the past few days there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively.

We don’t expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction.

MYTH: Google has “sold out” on network neutrality.

FACT: Google has been the leading corporate voice on the issue of network neutrality over the past five years. No other company is working as tirelessly for an open Internet.

But given political realities, this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. At this time there are no enforceable protections – at the Federal Communications Commission or anywhere else – against even the worst forms of carrier discrimination against Internet traffic.

With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We’re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all.

MYTH: This proposal represents a step backwards for the open Internet.

FACT: If adopted, this proposal would for the first time give the FCC the ability to preserve the open Internet through enforceable rules on broadband providers. At the same time, the FCC would be prohibited from imposing regulations on the Internet itself.

Here are some of the tangible benefits in our joint legislative proposal:

• Newly enforceable FCC standards
• Prohibitions against blocking or degrading wireline Internet traffic
• Prohibition against discriminating against wireline Internet traffic in ways that harm users or competition
• Presumption against all forms of prioritizing wireline Internet traffic
• Full transparency across wireline and wireless broadband platforms
• Clear FCC authority to adjudicate user complaints, and impose injunctions and fines against bad actors

Verizon has agreed to voluntarily abide by these same requirements going forward – another first for a major communications provider. We hope this action will convince other broadband companies to follow suit.

MYTH: This proposal would eliminate network neutrality over wireless.

FACT: It’s true that Google previously has advocated for certain openness safeguards to be applied in a similar fashion to what would be applied to wireline services. However, in the spirit of compromise, we have agreed to a proposal that allows this market to remain free from regulation for now, while Congress keeps a watchful eye.

Why? First, the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from. Second, because wireless networks employ airwaves, rather than wires, and share constrained capacity among many users, these carriers need to manage their networks more actively. Third, network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this space.

In our proposal, we agreed that the best first step is for wireless providers to be fully transparent with users about how network traffic is managed to avoid congestion, or prioritized for certain applications and content. Our proposal also asks the Federal government to monitor and report regularly on the state of the wireless broadband market. Importantly, Congress would always have the ability to step in and impose new safeguards on wireless broadband providers to protect consumers’ interests.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the future of wireless broadband increasingly will be found in the advanced, 4th generation (4G) networks now being constructed. Verizon will begin rolling out its 4G network this fall under openness license conditions that Google helped persuade the FCC to adopt. Clearwire is already providing 4G service in some markets, operating under a unique wholesale/openness business model. So consumers across the country are beginning to experience open Internet wireless platforms, which we hope will be enhanced and encouraged by our transparency proposal.

MYTH: This proposal will allow broadband providers to “cannibalize” the public Internet.

FACT: Another aspect of the joint proposal would allow broadband providers to offer certain specialized services to customers, services which are not part of the Internet. So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability – so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet. Some broadband providers already offer these types of services today. The chief challenge is to let consumers benefit from these non-Internet services, without allowing them to impede on the Internet itself.

We have a number of key protections in the proposal to protect the public Internet:

• First, the broadband provider must fully comply with the consumer protection and nondiscrimination standards governing its Internet access service before it could pursue any of these other online service opportunities.

• Second, these services must be “distinguishable in purpose and scope” from Internet access, so that they cannot over time supplant the best effort Internet.

• Third, the FCC retains its full capacity to monitor these various service offerings, and to intervene where necessary to ensure that robust, unfettered broadband capacity is allocated to Internet access.

So we believe there would be more than adequate tools in place to help guard against the “cannibalization” of the public Internet.

MYTH: Google is working with Verizon on this because of Android.

FACT: This is a policy proposal – not a business deal. Of course, Google has a close business relationship with Verizon, but ultimately this proposal has nothing to do with Android. Folks certainly should not be surprised by the announcement of this proposal, given our prior public policy work with Verizon on network neutrality, going back to our October 2009 blog post, our January 2010 joint FCC filing, and our April 2010 op-ed.

MYTH: Two corporations legislating the future of the Internet.

FACT: Our two companies are proposing a legislative framework to the Congress for its consideration. We hope all stakeholders will weigh in and help shape the framework to move us all forward. We’re not so presumptuous to think that any two businesses could – or should – decide the future of this issue. We’re simply trying to offer a proposal to help resolve a debate which has largely stagnated after five years.

It’s up to Congress, the FCC, other policymakers – and the American public – to take it from here. Whether you favor our proposal or not, we urge you to take your views directly to your Senators and Representatives in Washington.

We hope this helps address some of the inaccuracies that have appeared about our proposal. We’ll provide updates as the situation continues to develop.

Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel

(cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog)
Our mobile phones have become modern-day Swiss Army knives. An Android phone is a handheld computer, a music player, a notepad, a GPS navigation unit and more, all rolled into one sleek device that fits in your pocket. Today’s phones do so many things for us that sometimes we don’t even think about how we do them.
Even though our phones do all these new things, the most natural way of interacting with a phone remains what it always has been: speaking. And to that end, we’re pleased to introduce Voice Actions for Android. Voice Actions are a series of spoken commands that let you control your phone using your voice. Call businesses and contacts, send texts and email, listen to music, browse the web, and complete common tasks, all just by speaking into your phone.
To use Voice Actions, tap the microphone button on the Google search box on your home screen, or press down for a few seconds on the physical search button on your phone to activate the “Speak Now” screen. Let Mike LeBeau, the lead engineer for Voice Actions, show you in this video.

(from the Google Mobile YouTube Channel)
Speak any of these commands to perform a Voice Action on your phone:

• send text to [contact] [message]
• listen to [artist/song/album]
• call [business]
• call [contact]
• send email to [contact] [message]
• go to [website]
• note to self [note]
• navigate to [location/business name]
• directions to [location/business name]
• map of [location]

And of course, you can still conduct a Google search using your voice.



While we’re at it, we’re also releasing an updated version of the Google search widget for Android. When you type a local search query, like [italian restaurants] you’ll see suggested restaurants with addresses and ratings. Also, as you type queries, you can refine them further by tapping the pencil icon that appears to the right of search suggestions.
Both Voice Actions and the new Google search widget require Android 2.2 (Froyo), and will be pre-installed with the new Droid 2 phone from Motorola and Verizon. Voice Actions are currently available for U.S. English speakers.
If you have another phone with Android 2.2 (like the Nexus One, HTC Evo or the original Droid), you’ll need to download several app updates from Android Market to get all the latest goodness:

• Voice Search (this app includes Voice Actions)
• Google Search widget
• music apps (e.g. Pandora, Last.fm, Rdio, mSpot)

To get started fast, scan the QR codes for these apps below.
We think Voice Actions help you get things done on your phone faster and easier. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!
Voice SearchSearch widget

Posted by Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, and Dave Burke, Engineering Manager

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more, and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

I work on projects to help people communicate between languages—whether to read in foreign languages, write in different scripts or chat with people in other countries. Helping people understand information and each other, regardless of language, is an incredibly rewarding experience. This is why it’s always exciting to hear real testimonials from people who have used our language tools—especially in unexpected ways.

Ryan, from Ottawa, shared this moving story of how he used Google Transliteration to learn his future fiancée’s native language:

Received: 1/14/2010
From: Ryan
In October 2009, I proposed to my wonderful girlfriend, Irina, and am happy to report we are getting married this Summer. Although we met and fell in love in North America, I am from the United States, while she is originally from Bangladesh.

As our relationship developed, I naturally felt compelled to learn my fiancee's native language, to better understand her life and to learn to communicate to her non-English-speaking family members.
[...]
Recalling my junior high Spanish courses, I put together a list of English words I figured I should learn in Bangla and passed the list to Irina. After she had translated them for me, I clumsily began constructing awkward sentences and surprising her with them.
[...]
To help push my education along further, I transferred my word list into a Google spreadsheet via Google Documents. Whenever Irina would use a Bangla word I hadn't heard before, I would ask her what it meant, and then immediately put the word into my Google Document, which I titled “Bangla Dictionary.”; My dictionary grew and grew. Today it contains over 350 words and phrases.

As much as I enjoyed this process, in less than a year I had reached a “peak” and learned as much Bangla as I would ever learn using this method. I realized that if I were ever to learn how to speak Bangla, I would need to become LITERATE in Bangla.
[...]
That was when I discovered Google Transliteration. Irina had already shown me how to express Bangla words in English characters. By using your Transliteration feature I could spell a word the only way I knew how, and see immediately what it looked like in Bangla! With the help of a few online Bengali alphabet sites, I could now start learning the characters in the contexts of words and sentences I understood.

I am happy to report that I am finally learning to read and write in Bangla.
[...]
Thanks to your applications, I have learned a second language, become closer to my fiancee, and have opened the door toward building strong ties in my new Bangladeshi family.

We’re always happy to hear how people are using our tools to achieve their goals and, in this case, build relationships with future in-laws across the globe. We wish all the best to Ryan and Irina and here’s to many more years of communicating in Bangla!

Posted by Anjali Joshi, Director, Product Management

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more, and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

I work on several projects at Google with the goal of helping people improve their health and that of their loved ones. It’s humbling to read the feedback we receive from people who have used Google to find health information. These stories make us proud of what we do and encourage us to work harder to make our products even better.

Joe from Northern Ireland sent this story about how information he found with Google helped him welcome a new member to his family—firsthand:

Received: 12/23/2009
From: Joe
All I can say is thanks to google search engine. Why? My daughter went into labour in the early hours of Wednesday morning ... my wife phoned [emergency services] and my daughter got on her laptop and googled how to deliver a baby in an emergency ... I delivered my grandson just in time for the ambulance to arrive. The ambulance staff were gobsmacked to say the least. It hasn't quite sunk in yet but thanks to google and the emergency services I have a beautiful grandson. So there you have it first there was Google Earth now we have Google Birth. Many thanks.

Michael found resources to help him and his mother cope with the challenges of cancer treatment:

Received: 2/6/2010
From: Michael
I am ... a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I just wanted to say thank you for your search [engine] and the work it does to make information readily available to the world. I recently found out my mother has cancer in the esophagus. She has been undergoing chemo treatment ... and the last few days I've been on Google reading stories about other cancer survivors, side effects they've had from the treatments and even articles on foods she can eat to help heal her cancer. I get emotional writing this but I think google.com has been a blessing from God in facilitating people like myself to get connected to resources that are helpful, especially in difficult circumstances. Google has saved me countless hours of research that I could be spending in and out of libraries [to] find the information we need to help us get through this ... Thank you and God bless you.

Bettie used Google to find a surgeon who helped save her husband’s kidney:

Received: 11/6/2009
From: Bettie
My husband and I have an amazing story to share about a surgeon I found easily through Google. Everyone that hears our story tells us we should write a book. Not sure we'll ever get around to that, but we do want to thank Google for directing us to the best possible surgeon to save my husband's one remaining kidney. He had been to many local, well-respected doctors and nationally recognized hospitals for months. None seemed to have the expertise needed to perform the challenging surgery on four malignant kidney tumors. Not only did Google direct us quickly to an expert in the field, but the site had a place to "Talk to the Doctor". On a Sunday afternoon, the doctor himself responded by email in four minutes ... Thank you for saving my husband's only kidney and possibly his life!

Thanks to Joe, Michael, Bettie and the many others who share their deeply personal stories with us. It’s the people behind every search—and our ability to help them—that make my team feel so committed to providing the best services we can.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist

It’s App Tuesday again, which means we’re excited to launch nine new apps in the Google Apps Marketplace. Like the other 150+ installable apps in the Marketplace, these apps help solve some of the toughest challenges that many businesses face today. While all apps are accessible from a user’s universal navigation bar, some of these apps integrate even further with Gmail, Calendar, Docs and more.

This new batch of apps helps users seamlessly and easily tackle all kinds of issues—from time management with RescueTime to procurement with Ketera.

Check out our post on the Enterprise Blog for more information on these apps as well as the other seven launching today, or go right to the Marketplace.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning.

Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world's geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways.


John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators

As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site. Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant, which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost.

In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first-ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?”


The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford

The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions, they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

This is the first in a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more. -Ed.

We talk a lot about the products we build and the things we’re doing, but we don't often talk about the ways in which search touches people’s lives every day. Yet our ability to help people is why I—and most of the people around me—love working on search.

Some of the best feedback we receive are the real-world stories of how people have used Google to make an impact in their lives or the lives of others. We’re constantly amazed at what people can do and have done with our technology—from making a life-saving diagnosis to reuniting with a long lost love.

This first story struck a chord with me because, oddly enough, a chimney plays a significant role in my family lore. The night I was born, our chimney collapsed into the house—in fact it was the chimney collapsing that triggered my mom’s labor. Google helped Christine’s family avoid harm in a similar situation.

Submitted: 11/12/09 2:24 PM
From: Christine
YOU SAVED OUR LIVES!!!
While we usually Google things like hotel prices, product reviews and autism materials, today Google returned the right site at the top of the page in just the nick of time!
About an hour after warming up our fireplace, my husband and I were startled by the rumbling sound of what we thought was a low flying helicopter. My husband darted outside to look for one, but there was nothing of any aircraft in sight. He did tell me about the thick billowing smoke coming from our chimney.

Nervous, I quickly Googled “chimney fires” and within a second the first link caught my attention. At this site I learned that the rumbling sound is what many people hear when their chimney have caught fire! I then called 911 and they advised us to get out of the house right away!

Within 5 minutes our chimney was fully engulfed with flames! I have been praising Google all day today!

So thank you Google for working so hard to make researching and information gathering fast, easy and accessible. Without your commitment to a better product, we very well may have lost our house or our lives today!

This is just the first of many stories like it that we plan to share with you over the course of this week. They’re a huge source of inspiration for us and we’ll hope they’ll be for you, too—check ‘em out. And if you have a Google story, tell us about it.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search