Sunday, September 28, 2008


Wish You Happy Birthday Google!

The AFP has clearly been waiting for September 15, so it could trot out today's "Google is 10 years old" story. But the company itself doesn't count tomorrow as its 10th birthday. In fact, knowing exactly when Google's birthday is depends on your point of view. Some milestones to consider below, which make Google as old as 12 and as young as 9. Plus, more special Google birthday logos.

Google Birthday Logos

How about those special birthday logos? Google's been putting them up consistently since 2002. The first year, it happened on September 27, then shifted to September 7, then back to September 27 from 2005 onward. I'd expect to see a special ninth birthday logo showing up on the 27th of this month.

4th Birthday: 2002

Celebrated on September 27th, 2002.

5th Birthday: 2003

Celebrated on September 7th, 2003.

6th Birthday: 2004

Celebrated on September 7th, 2004.

7th Birthday: 2005

Celebrated on September 27th, 2005.

8th Birthday: 2006

Celebrated on September 27th, 2006.

Postscript: Google Birthday Logo: Nine Years Old covers how, as predicted, Google put up a special nine years old logo. Here it is:

Google's 9th Birthday Logo

Monday, September 22, 2008


gOS 3.0


Introducing gOS 3 Gadgets BETA

gOS 3 Gadgets BETA instantly launches Google Gadgets for Linux on startup, introducing over 100,000 possible iGoogle and Google Gadgets to the desktop.


Google Documents, Calendar, and Mail launch in Mozilla Prism windows to closer resemble desktop applications.

The newest release of WINE 1.0 is included to now support thousands of Windows software for our advanced users.

gOS 3 Gadgets BETA is based on the solid Linux distribution base of Ubuntu 8.04.1.

gOS 3.0 Features

Wine

Wine allows you to run thousands of Windows applications under Linux including popular titles like Adobe Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and World of Warcraft. Usually thought of as a Microsoft Windows emulator, Wine developers would prefer that users thought of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer for Linux.

Google Gadgets

Use Google 'Gadgets' on gOS - Install 3rd party Widgets to your desktop, code your own, or play around with the array of built-in gadgets!

Mozilla Prism

Prism is a new application from mozilla that splits web applications out of their browser and runs them directly on the gOS desktop.
Included: Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Documents, and YouTube.

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0

The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life.

Skype

Talk, listen, watch, read, and write to anyone, anywhere in the world without worrying about cost, distance or time. With Skype you can Make free Skype-to-Skype calls – any time of day, any day of the week, anywhere in the world.


Google Milestones

1995-1997

1995

  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 24, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 23, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

1996

  • Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
  • BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year -- eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997

  • Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google -- a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

1998

August

  • Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September

  • Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
  • Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check.
  • Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he's a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December

  • "PC Magazine" reports that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

1999

February

  • We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.

May

June

  • Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing "Googlers" as "people who use Google."

August

  • We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

November

  • Charlie Ayers joins as Google's first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company's 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

2000

April

  • On April Fool's Day, we announce the MentalPlex: Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

May

  • The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.
  • We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).

June

September

  • We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

October

  • Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

December

  • Google Toolbar is released. It's a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

2001

January

  • We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.

February

  • Our first public acquisition: Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

March

April

July

  • Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

August

  • We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
  • Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

October

December

2002

February

  • Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
  • The first Google hardware is released: it's a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
  • We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

April

  • For April Fool's Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
  • We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

May

  • We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
  • We release Google Labs for users to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

September

October

  • We open our first Australian office in Sydney.

December

2003

January

  • American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.

February

March

  • We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

April

  • We launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

October

  • Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

December

2004

January

  • orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.

February

  • Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
  • Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.

March

  • We move to our new "Googleplex" at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.
  • We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business.
  • We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

April

  • For April Fool's we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.

May

  • We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

August

  • Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.

September

  • There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

October

  • We formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.
  • Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device.
  • Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes "lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet."
  • We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.
  • Google Desktop Search is introduced: users can now search for files and documents stored on their own hard drive using Google technology.
  • We launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
  • We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

November

December

  • We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.
  • The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library.

2005

February

March

  • We launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.
  • Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.
  • We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

April

May

June

  • We hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.
  • Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
  • We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.
  • We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.
  • API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

August

  • Google scores well in the U.S. government's 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We've done so in subsequent years as well.)
  • We launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

September

  • Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.
  • DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.
  • Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.
  • Google Blog Search goes live; it's the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

October

  • Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
  • Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point." Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

November

  • We release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.
  • We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

December

2006

January

February

March

  • We announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.
  • A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

April

  • For April Fool's we unveil a new product, Google Romance: "Dating is a search problem."
  • We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
  • We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

May

  • We release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

June

  • We announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing Picasa users to upload and share their photos online
  • The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds "Google" as a verb.
  • Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
  • Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

July

  • At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

August

September

October

November

  • The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

December

2007

January

  • We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

February

  • We release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability.
  • Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian.
  • For Valentine's Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only).
  • Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.
  • The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.
  • We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the US.

March

April

May

  • In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.
  • We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site.
  • At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
  • Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.
  • Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.
  • On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

June

July

August

September

  • AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites.
  • Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.
  • We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.
  • Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

October

  • We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

November

  • We announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.
  • Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.
  • Google.org announces RE, an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solar thermal power and wind power technologies.

December

  • The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.

2008

January

February

  • For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.
  • Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables users to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents, and calendars.

March

April

  • We feature 16 April Fool's jokes from our offices around the world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China), and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are "Rickrolled."
  • A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.
  • Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It's a free website-testing tool with which users can continually test different combinations of their website content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.
  • We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.
  • We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes ("skins") for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

May

  • Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.
  • Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.
  • At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
  • With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.
  • Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.
  • We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.
  • California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle "Up In The Clouds."

June

  • Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.
  • A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.
  • For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

July

August

  • Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia - the first time it's appeared outside of North America or Europe.
  • Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and reduce keystrokes.
  • Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

September

  • Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.
  • We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
  • We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker, and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing users to "name tag" people in photos.
  • Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.
  • Thanks to all of our users, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.


Ten things Google has found to be true

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:

  • The interface is clear and simple.
  • Pages load instantly.
  • Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
  • Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service already considered the best on the web at making finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of users. Our dedication to improving search has also allowed us to apply what we've learned to new products, including Gmail, Google Desktop, and Google Maps. As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.

3. Fast is better than slow.

Google believes in instant gratification. You want answers and you want them right now. Who are we to argue? Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. By fanatically obsessing on shaving every excess bit and byte from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, Google has broken its own speed records time and again. Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. And Google continues to work on making it all go even faster.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value. Instead of relying on a group of editors or solely on the frequency with which certain terms appear, Google ranks every web page using a breakthrough technique called PageRank™. PageRank evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them. By analyzing the full structure of the web, Google is able to determine which sites have been "voted" the best sources of information by those most interested in the information they offer. This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

The world is increasingly mobile and unwilling to be constrained to a fixed location. Whether it's through their PDAs, their wireless phones or even their automobiles, people want information to come to them. Google's innovations in this area include Google Number Search, which reduces the number of keypad strokes required to find data from a web-enabled cellular phone and an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. This system opens up billions of pages for viewing from devices that would otherwise not be able to display them, including Palm PDAs and Japanese i-mode, J-Sky, and EZWeb devices. Wherever search is likely to help users obtain the information they seek, Google is pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That's because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they're relevant to the results page on which they're shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.

Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Google's maximization group works with advertisers to improve clickthrough rates over the life of a campaign, because high clickthrough rates are an indication that ads are relevant to a user's interests. Any advertiser, no matter how small or how large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium, whether through our self-service advertising program that puts ads online within minutes, or with the assistance of a Google advertising representative.

Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link." It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google's objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

7. There's always more information out there.

Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search billions of images and a way to view pages that were originally created as PDF files. The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For wireless users, Google developed a unique way to translate HTML formatted files into a format that could be read by mobile devices. The list is not likely to end there as Google's researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to users seeking answers.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Though Google is headquartered in California, our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, so we have offices around the globe. To that end we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States. Google search results can be restricted to pages written in more than 35 languages according to a user's preference. We also offer a translation feature to make content available to users regardless of their native tongue and for those who prefer not to search in English, Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. To accelerate the addition of new languages, Google offers volunteers the opportunity to help in the translation through an automated tool available on the Google.com website. This process has greatly improved both the variety and quality of service we're able to offer users in even the most far flung corners of the globe.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Google's founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search. They built a company around the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. To that end, Google's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls, or the fact that the company's chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to our online service, Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company's overall success. Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. This highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

Always deliver more than expected. Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. Search works well for properly spelled words, but what about typos? One engineer saw a need and created a spell checker that seems to read a user's mind. It takes too long to search from a WAP phone? Our wireless group developed Google Number Search to reduce entries from three keystrokes per letter to one. With a user base in the millions, Google is able to identify points of friction quickly and smooth them out. Google's point of distinction however, is anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008


Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project

http://www.download.com/i/bto/20080902/Chrome.jpg


Today there was a comic book in my mail, sent by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics. Within the 38 pages, which I’ve scanned and put up, in very readable format Google gives the technical details into a project of theirs: an open source browser called Google Chrome. The book points to www.google.com/chrome, but I can’t see anything live there yet. In a nut-shell, here’s what the comic announces Google Chrome to be:

  • Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
  • The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
  • Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.

  • The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox (“omni” is a prefix meaning “all”, as in “omniscient” – “all-knowing”) also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
  • As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.

  • Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a secret. As far as Microsoft’s InPrivate mode is concerned, people also speculated it was a “porn mode.”
  • Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar. Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).
  • To fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model, Google admits.

This looks like a very interesting project, and I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area. Google is playing this as nicely as possible by open-sourcing things, with perhaps part of the reason to try to defend against monopoly accusations – after all, Google already owns a lot of what’s happening inside the browser, and some may feel owning a browser too could be a little too much power for a single company (Google could, for instance, release browser features that benefit their sites more than most other sites... as can Microsoft with Internet Explorer). For now, until Chrome is released in a testable version, how much of the speed, stability and user interface promises will be fullfilled – and how much of the interface you’ll be able to configure in case you don’t like it – remains to be seen.

[Images by Google.]

Update: Google now posted on this at their blog, announcing the launch date to be tomorrow, Tuesday.

Update 2: At gears.google.com/chrome/, screenshots of Google Chrome have appeared:

The service’s logo is also shown on that page (it also appears in Google’s official reprint of the comic at Google Books):




Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Download Google Chrome

For Windows Vista/XP