Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] European Court of Justice rules in Google’s favour

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:50 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: European Court of Justice rules in Google's favour

Google aims to provide as much information as possible to users so that they can make informed decisions. For this reason, we have been awaiting a series of decisions by the European Court of Justice that explore the extent to which trade mark rights can be used to restrict information available to users. The first of those decisions was delivered today.

The question before the court was whether advertisers should be allowed to choose keywords freely when reaching out to users on the Internet. In other words, if advertisers are allowed to show advertisements when another company's brand name is entered as a search query.

Trade marks are part of our daily life and culture, helping us to identify the products and services that we may be looking for. They are key for companies to market and advertise their products and services. But trade mark rights are not absolute.

We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts. For instance, if a user is searching for information about a particular car, he or she will want more than just that car's website. They might be looking for different dealers that sell that car, second hand cars, reviews about the car or looking for information about other cars in the same category.

And, contrary to what some are intimating, this case is not about us arguing for a right to advertise counterfeit goods. We have strict policies that forbid the advertising of counterfeit goods; it's a bad user experience. We work collaboratively with brand owners to better identify and deal with counterfeiters.

Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trade mark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately they want to be able to exercise greater control over the infomation available to users by preventing other companies from advertising when a user enters their trade mark as a search query. In other words, controlling and restricting the amount of information that users may see in response to their searches.

Today, the Court confirmed that Google has not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors' trade marks. It also confirmed that European law that protects internet hosting services applies to Google's AdWords advertising system. This is important because it is a fundamental principle behind the free flow of information over the internet.

Our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We will study the decision as we move forward in order to make sure that we continue to deliver advertising that is perceived as both valuable and relevant by our users.

Posted by Dr. Harjinder S. Obhi, Senior Litigation Counsel, EMEA
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/european-court-of-justice-rules-in.html

[G] Training a Toy Elephant with Google Summer of Code

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 10:58 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Training a Toy Elephant with Google Summer of Code


Google has redefined many many things. It has redefined scalability. When the entire world was racing towards high performance computing, Google came up with MapReduce and the Google File System that allowed them to process the whole web in a matter of hours across thousands of cheap computers. With its education on MapReduce, with its contributions to Open Source in terms of code, infrastructure and innovative initiatives like the Google Summer of Code™, Google has taken openness to a whole new level. Through its dataliberation.org initiatives, Google also allows you to export your private data outside outside the Google server. Google also liberates public user data like the MapMaker annotations, which was exported within hours of the Chilean earthquake. When you are inspired by the technology, the data liberation, the Open Source and have two amazing years in Google Summer of Code, you end up with a great open tool like Apache Mahout.

Mahout is an Apache Software Foundation project, which aims to create scalable machine-learning libraries using a variety of techniques including leveraging Apache Hadoop. Unlike other Open Source machine-learning libraries, Mahout was built with one thing in mind: the ability to scale over large sized data. We are not talking about the whole Internet here, just a small fraction of it, but large enough that processing them is near to impossible on one machine. Mahout is becoming more and more relevant in a world where gigabytes and terabytes of data are coming into the hands of the public. The latest release of Mahout has really solid and scalable implementations of recommendation, clustering, classification, pattern mining, and genetic algorithms.

Two years ago, I had a chance to join the project along with Deneche Abdel Hakim and David Hall when we were selected in the Google Summer of Code program. With help from our mentors and other committers on Mahout, we were able to contribute a lot of algorithms to the project. After two amazing years in Google Summer of Code and on the verge of the third one, the project looks like its about to break free. We have more contributors coming in, more algorithms, improvements in quality and performance. Mahout is also being made a top-level project under Apache. The latest release of Mahout contains the Colt high performance collections. This has given a great boost to the performance of the core data-structures. Mahout can create vectors from the entire articles of Wikipedia in English in under an hour on an 8 node Hadoop cluster. This is just the beginning, as more interesting things are being planned for future releases and I see a big role of Summer of code students in it. Mahout is a great platform for students and professors in universities to use for their research work in machine learning to get results quickly for large data-sets.

Recently, I went to the India Hadoop Summit at Bangalore, India to help spread awareness of Apache Mahout and Google Summer of Code. I had the good fortune of presenting Mahout in the un-conference to a big group of cloud computing lovers from India.























I talked about the different algorithms in Mahout and was thrilled by the enthusiasm of the students there.






Many people including cloud computing adopters and students were hearing about the Google Summer of Code program for the very first time and I am happy that I helped spread the awareness of the same.

Mahout has grown, and so have I, from a Google Summer of Code student to a committer at Mahout, to a Googler and hopefully to being a mentor this year. I am also co-authoring a book on Mahout with Manning publications. Google Summer of Code has opened up many doors for me. It helped me hone my coding skills, helped me get in touch with cutting edge research work, helped me find great peers in the Open Source community whose help I will always cherish. Many thanks to Google and the Google Summer of Code program for giving me this opportunity and for helping thousands of students and hundreds of Open Source projects worldwide and for ensuring that the world and its information stays open.

You can find more about Mahout Project and the usages of various algorithms on the Mahout wiki. If you are a student interested in implementing a data-mining or a machine-learning algorithm, Mahout is the right place to be this summer. Take a look at our GSOC project ideas here and please come and discuss your proposal with us on the Mahout mailing list.

Pictures courtesy of Dave Nielson, Co-Founder, Cloudcamp

By Robin Anil, Google Summer of Code Student (2008, 2009) & Apache Committer

URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/training-toy-elephant-with-google.html

[G] Experiment to show hotel prices on Google Maps

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 05:31 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Experiment to show hotel prices on Google Maps


Google Maps is often one of the first stops travelers make to find and compare hotels. Today we started experimenting with a new feature, visible to a small portion of users, to help make that process even easier by showing specific prices for selected hotel listings.

With this feature, when you search for hotels on Google Maps you'll be able to enter the dates you plan to stay and see real prices on selected listings. You can click on the price to see a list of advertisers who have provided pricing information for that hotel, indicated by the "Sponsored" text, and click through to reserve a room on the advertiser's site. By showing you this relevant hotel rate information directly in the Google Maps results panel we hope to make this aspect of your trip planning more speedy and efficient - so you can get where you're going and enjoy your travel destination!

Here's an example of the Google Maps results for someone who is searching for hotels in New York City:

This new feature will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors, regardless of whether there is an associated price.

While we're experimenting with this feature, we're currently working with a limited number of advertisers and it will only be visible to a small portion of users . As always, we'll evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of this new feature based on both data and feedback, and hope to make it available to more users and offer prices from more partners over time.

Posted by Andrew Silverman, Product Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-to-show-hotel-prices-on.html

[G] Consolidating 10 Email Systems Down to One: Google Apps

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:06 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Consolidating 10 Email Systems Down to One: Google Apps

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Melvin Shaffer, VP of global infrastructure delivery and support at MWV, a $6.6 billion packaging company. In December, MWV announced it had gone Google. Mel is responsible for all aspects of infrastructure delivery including strategy, finance, service management, telecom, desktop, field services, and the infrastructure outsourcing relationship supporting mainframe, distributed, storage, messaging, and service desk.

Mel's experience spans 30 years in IT management and consulting across a range of industries including Fortune 50 pharmacy, healthcare, petroleum and telecommunications companies.

Join Mel and Wietze de Vries, Principal IT Architect at MWV, for a live webcast on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT. Mel and Wietze will talk about MWV's approach to moving 12,000 employees to Google Apps from multiple mail systems. Please note that registration will occur on a third party site.

MWV is 164 years old, and there were days when it showed. We had grown extensively through acquisitions, leaving us with 12 siloed email systems, including multiple instances of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino® across the globe. We had to consolidate more than 10 email systems into one – a major undertaking.

From a technical standpoint, we saw that Google Apps would offer superior functionality, and would enable us to standardize globally and rapidly integrate new acquisitions. We checked out Google's security capabilities in-depth – a major concern for us – and ended up satisfied. From a user standpoint, we conducted a pilot with 115 participants, 12 countries, and 40 functional groups. Ninety percent of them recommended Google.

For migration, we used a series of waves organized around one or more legacy email systems: sort of a mini "Big Bang" or a rolling thunder approach. Each time we did a go-live, we did not migrate email, we just changed user settings in Postini. We provisioned users a month in advance, letting them know how to sign on. We rebuilt fresh distribution lists and used a self-service tool to migrate personal contacts. We re-created calendar events with a fresh start.

To make sure we had mobile access covered, we piloted Google Apps with BlackBerry® devices, iPhones® and Android phones.

Communications, change management and training – including recruiting volunteers to be "Google Guides" were key throughout the process. From a technical standpoint, we can tell you about the more trouble-prone areas of our implementation such as how legacy systems can contain a log of stale email accounts.

If you want to learn about the benefits and best practices of legacy email migration, we have a lot of experience. We welcome the opportunity to share the lessons we learned in moving a major enterprise to Google Apps.

Please join us for this live event.

MWV on Consolidating 10 Email Systems Down to One: Google Apps
Thursday, March 25, 2010
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino®.


URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/consolidating-10-email-systems-down-to.html

[G] FriendFeed Subscriber counts not reported for March 20th and 21st

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 01:49 PM PDT

The FeedBurner Status Blog: FriendFeed Subscriber counts not reported for March 20th and 21st

Issue: FriendFeed subscriber counts unavailable for some publishers for the weekend ending 21-Mar. At this time it does not appear as if the issue is affecting all feeds. This is a reporting problem only. No disruption in feed distribution is associated.

URL: http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2010/03/friendfeed-subscriber-counts-not.html

[G] A new approach to China: an update

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:51 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html

[G] Web Analytics TV #7 with Avinash and Nick

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:51 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Web Analytics TV #7 with Avinash and Nick

This is the 7th edition of Web Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski! In this series you ask questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Here is the list of last week's questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

● Test your tracking implementation without waiting for the data to appear in reports.

● How GZip compression works for the tracking code.

● Retrieving the value for visitor level customer variables.

● Adding annotations via the API.

● Why do searches from Google Image Search appear as referrals in Google Analytics?

● Why do I see self-referrers to my site (my site referring to itself)?

● How to detect new search engines in Google Analytics?

● Fixing site overlay to not distinguish two links pointing to the same page.

● How to exclude internal users now that _setVar is deprecated.

● Why does (not set) appear as page titles in reports?

● What is the best way to begin with web analytics? How do you focus?

● Why do longer date ranges return different results?

● How can you use the Motion Chart bar graph?

● Best practises for setting up conversion goals for e-commerce sites.







Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

● Validating and Troubleshooting your Google Analytics tracking code.

● Speed up your site, get better data, use asynchronous tracking.

● Use _getVisitorCustomVar() to retieve previously set visitor level custom variables.

● The open feature request to add annotations via our API; please vote and add use cases.

● Override the page referral using _setReferrerOverride().

● One possible solution to tracking Google Image Search.

● Use _addOrganic() to detect new search engines to in Google Analytics.

● Need help with Google Analytics? Have tough questions? Check out these 4 wonderful resources for help:

○ Hire a Google Analytics Authorized Consultants

○ Google Analytics Help Center

○ Google Analytics Code Site for developers

○ Google Analytics General Help Forum

● How sampling works in Google Analytics.

● Rock out with the Motion Charts Anthem (super cool!).

Special Notice: We also have a Custom Variables Webinar coming up on Wednesday, March 24th at 10:00 am PT. Space is limited, sign up before it's too late!

If you found this post helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/03/web-analytics-tv-7-with-avinash-and.html

[G] How would you improve Google forms?

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:48 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: How would you improve Google forms?

Since launching Google Docs forms last year, we've enjoyed seeing people use them for everything from wedding guest lists and party invites to surveys and scorekeeping for Oscar parties. We're hard at work improving this feature, and we want to know more about what you think.

We recently added a new section specifically for forms to our Product Ideas for Google Docs page. Head over and tell us what you think we should do to make forms better, and see what others have to say as well. If you come across other ideas you like, vote them up.

Don't forget, we're still looking for feedback about documents, spreadsheets, and presentations too. We've already implemented six of your ideas, including shared folders, a web clipboard for better cutting and pasting between applications, and an increase in file size limits for uploads to your Docs List.

We look forward to hearing what you have to say, and stay tuned for more updates on implemented ideas.

Posted by: Ethan Ambabo, Product Ideas Lead
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-would-you-improve-google-forms.html

[G] Google search now supports Haitian Kreyòl

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 09:54 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Google search now supports Haitian Kreyòl

Last week we added Haitian Kreyòl as a language to Google search. Visitors to our Haitian homepage can now use search in English, French and Kreyòl.

Haitian Kreyòl is spoken by more than 10 million people in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora in the Bahamas, Canada, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, France, French Guiana, Puerto Rico and the United States.

The massive earthquake that recently stuck Haiti took a heavy toll on communication infrastructure (including TV, radio and newspapers). In the weeks following the earthquake, the Internet has become an important tool for Haitians to search for news and information. We previously added support for Haitian Kreyòl to Google Translate and we are happy that Google search can now be used the Haitian people in their native language.

We would like to thank the Haitian volunteers who heard our call for volunteer translators and generously shared their time and knowledge to improve the search experience for all Haitians.



Posted by Christine Multidor, Engineering Recruiting Coordinator, on behalf of the Internationalization Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-search-now-supports-haitian.html
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