Google Docs Gets Lots of Updates Google Docs added lots of new stuff, including saved searches, offline Google Gears access for spreadsheets and presentations, custom document stylesheets (using CSS), speaker notes in presentations, and embedded YouTube videos in presentations.
Move Your Life To Gmail With Gmail Uploader Google released last month the Gmail Uploader, a free application that moves your email and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (on Windows XP and Vista only) to a Google Apps Gmail account. Considering the huge number of limitations (only three email programs, two operating systems, and one very specific and less popular edition of Gmail), you may never get the chance to use it, which is a shame, because most new Gmail users would love the easy migration method.
Google Charts Now Does QR Codes
Google has been trying out QR Codes (a type of 2D bar codes) in its print ads, and now they’re making it easier to generate them on the web. Before, you’d have to use a web app or software to create a QR Code, then save the image to use on your website, but now the Google Chart API can be queried to get them automatically. Right now, all you get are website URLs, though hopefully Google will extend the API to handle more complex data.
Here’s an API-generated image for this site, using the URL http://chartserver.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://google.blognewschannel.com/:
Blogger Adds Future Posts
Google’s Blogger has added the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future by specifying a date yet to come for your post. This feature was tested in Blogger In Draft, and is yet another feature to make its way into the ever improving Blogger.
Google Invests In New Clearwire Google entered into an agreement with Sprint and others (Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners), investing half a billion dollars in a new formation of wireless ISP Clearwire. The new company will be 51% Sprint-owned, taking Sprint’s Xohm WiMax business. Google’s a wireless provider of sorts, now, and will help get open devices, including Android devices, on the network, and provide search and applications for the network.
Google Me - A Documentary About Search
This documentary features a guy searching for others with this same name as him. A concept we’ve heard before, though it seems to have resulted in an interest project.
Google’s Head of PR Goes to Facebook
Elliot Schrage leaves for Facebook, costing Google its vice president of global communications and public affairs. Of course, Google’s corporate PR policies haven’t been that smart the last few years, so maybe this isn’t great news for Facebook.
Google Maps Interface Slimmed Down
Google has finally trimmed some of the cruft building on Google Maps, combining and simplifying an interface that was getting too complicated and cluttered.
Blogger Gets Integrated Analytics
Google has integrated Google Analytics into Blogger for Blogger users that are interested, giving access to stats inside the Blogger Dashboard along with special stats tracking relevant to blogs. They’re also letting Measure Map users roll over their accounts into Google Analytics now.
Googler is Convicted Hacker Valleywag has an article about Christophe Bisciglia, a senior software engineer at Google who is also a convicted former hacker. Bisciglia got in a dispute with his boss about a decade ago at the age of 17, and decided to take revenge by flooding the system with emails, sending email to the company’s customers, and defacing their website. Obviously he’s matured since then, but lets hope the next time he loses his temper the results don’t show in your Gmail account.
Spring Google Doodle
Google ran this Doodle logo to mark the beginning of Spring:
Google Loses FCC Auction The final results in the FCC’s spectrum auction are in, and the winners of major blocks of the 700 MHz spectrum are Verizon, winner of most of the coveted and somewhat open C block with Vodaphone (along with parts of A and B block), and AT&T, winner of most of B block. In total, the auction raised over $19 billion, much more than was expected, none of it from Google.
Hulu Launches
NBC and News Corp finally launchedHulu.com, its YouTube competitor video site, to the general public last week. Early reports are that, despite a lot of criticism from the press a year ago, the site has developed into a strong, high quality platform with a decent amount of good content. Hulu has a bunch of TV shows and full-length movies, and doesn’t charge anything to show them, just inserting ads. As long as the content is there, there’s absolutely no reason Hulu won’t be a hit.
Google Completes Purchase of DoubleClick
With the European regulators finally signing off on the deal, Google completed its megabillion dollar deal to buy DoubleClick. The acquisition met with a lot of opposition from Google’s competitors, who complained that it would create a monopoly in online advertising, but both U.S. and EU officials determined that DoubleClick’s business was sufficiently different enough from Google’s core search ad business, plus a possible Yahoo/Microsoft combo would be competitive enough.
The final acquisition cost was $3.24 billion, according to Google, about $140 million than originally planned. That’s either due to inflation, unexpected costs, slight changes in the deal, or includes the cost of getting the acquisition improved in the first place. SEJournal has the text of an email Google sent to all of DoubleClick’s clients with some FAQs.
Yahoo Buzz Driving Massive Traffic
I completely recant my earlier criticism of Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo’s Digg competitor. The main difference between Buzz and Digg is that it only allows in publishers who use a Yahoo advertising program, and the top stories from Buzz make their way onto the Yahoo homepage, the most popular webpage on the planet. Publishers in the program are reporting all-time traffic records, even really popular sites like Salon and TechCrunch, making Buzz a huge incentive for publishers to use Yahoo for their ads. Yahoo should have thought of this years ago.
YouTube Integrated Into Spore
The much anticipated Spore, arriving later this year from Maxis and gaming legend Will Wright this September, will include integration with Google’s YouTube. Players will be able to upload videos of their Spore creatures to YouTube while playing the game, and an official Spore channel on YouTube will feature the best contributions from the community. I got to sit down with an EA rep at a recent games preview event, and I was shocked at how well-thought out and integral the community aspect was for Spore, and the YouTube integration represents yet another great addition.
AOL Buys Bebo AOL bought Bebo, a mega popular (in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand) social networking site for $850 million. While the acquisition price has been widely panned as too expensive, it does underscore the importance of social sites being popular in countries other than the United States, and how MySpace and Facebook are not the only real players.
Google’s Doodle 4 Google competition, in which schoolchildren are given the opportunity to draw a logo for Google’s homepage, has finally come to the United States, after stints in England and Australia. The contest will give students from Kindergarten to 12th Grade a chance to draw a Doodle for Google.com, with the winner getting their logo on the homepage for one day, as well as a $10,000 college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.
The rules call for the Doodle to have a “What if… ?” theme, with the kids being divided up into four groups by grade. 40 regional winners will be chosen, and flown out to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, in May. A public vote will choose four national finalists, then Doodler-in-Chief Dennis Hwang will choose the overall winner. Any school can register, with approval of a teacher or principal, by the registration deadline of March 28.
Besides the national winner, the other three national finalists will receive a laptop computer and a t-shirt with their Doodle. The other 36 regional winners will also get the t-shirt (but at least they also get the free trip to the Googleplex). Another 360 state finalists get a Doodle 4 Google certificate.
The latest issue of Marie Claire, which my wife gets, has a big spring fashion feature shot on Google’s Mountain View campus. The 12-page spread features model Britni Standwood on a roof in front of giant Google letters and solor panels, a giant Google Earth globe, an aluminum foil-decorated office, scootering around the grounds, near the lap pool, in a sleep pod, on an electric car, in a “huddle room” and by a dry-erase board.
Here are some low-fi images of the magazine spread:
There is also a page featuring the women of Google, specifically (from left to right):
Shona Brown (Senior VP of business operations) in a $320 Calvin Klein pantsuit jacket and $276 pants
Sukhinder Singh (President of Asia-Pacific and Latin America operations) in a $950 Boss jacket, $225 Theory pants and $745 Manolo Blahnik shoes
Megan Smith (VP of new business development) in a $374 jacket and $282 Chaiken pants
Francoise Brougher (VP of business operations) in a $148 Calvin Klein jacket and $250 Tigal Azrouel scarf
Susan Wojcicki (VP of product management and Sergey’s sister-in law) in a $435 jacket, $385 Tory Burch dress and $540 Casadei shoes
Marissa Mayer (VP of search products and user experience) in a $396 Chaiken jacket, $68 Cosabella camisole, $250 Tory Burch skirt and $850 Chanel shoes
Lest you think this is how the women of Google dress every day, Marie Claire only priced out the clothes it provided. When the exec wore her own clothes, like Brown and Smith’s shoes, it was noted, without the cost or designer (and, oddly, those were the most prominent shoes in the photo). As Valleywag’s Owen Thomas says, “I’ve known Megan Smith for years, and cannot recall ever seeing her wearing something that was not (a) made of denim and (b) priced at less than $100″.
Her shoes seem nice, though, being a heterosexual male, I really don’t know much about shoes.
Bob Woodward, the Washington Post editor most famous for working to uncover the Watergate scandal, spoke at Google earlier this month as part of the company’s Authors@Google series. In the video below, Woordward is interviewed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Google took the company on its annual West Coast trip last week, breakiing its ski trip tradition and going to Disneyland last Monday through Wednesday. Thousands of Googlers flew from three San Francisco airports to three airports in the Los Angeles area to stay in 10 different hotels, a logistical nightmare that pulled together in what many are calling the greatest Google company trip yet.
Ionut Alex has aggregated quotes from a bunch of Googler blogs about the trip. Some observations:
Reid: “Suffice it to say, it was an incredible experience. I got to go on rides I had gone on over 10 years ago… And, I got to ride the new rides. From 8pm-1am, the park was open only to Googlers, with our very own fireworks show and no waits in the lines. I’m still recovering…”
Matthew: “Anyway, as a young 20 something, Disneyland wasn’t exactly my scene. Obviously I saw some of the value in all of the attractions and what not, I just would have rather spent my time skiing or golfing somewhere. But without question, Space Mountain was quite cool and it totally runs like a ride designed by Walt Disney himself.”
Looks like some spent a good deal of time enjoying LA, instead of just the park. Ulf: “ove going to LA. Usually I spend more time in the West LA area, but this time I used our Anaheim hotel location to focus more on the OC. The LA area beach cities are awesome - may it be Manhattan Beach, Newport or Laguna Beach - everyone has their unique flair.”
Nimimesh actually got on the rides with Google chiefs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.
Billy spotted a 45-year old guy with no kids and a season pass, who looks like he goes to Disneyland every day and rides the attractions alone, complaining that the park was closing earlier for all the Googlers. Plus he got his ass grabbed by Minnie Mouse! Once the park closed for just Google, there were no lines (with 14.5 million visitors a year, a few thousand geeks meant for a relatively empty park).
Here are two Picasa photo albums of photos Googlers took on the trip:
Valleywag has heard that Google has ended its tradition of taking the whole company skiing every winter, instead taking everyone to Disneyland. Google had to end the long-standing tradition because the company has just grown too damn large for Tahoe, and Disneyland was needed to fit everybody. You’ll remember last year, the trip was so big they had to split the company into nine parts, with three waves going at different times to three different hotels.
Anyway, this year’s trip will be in February, as usual, and for two days, if you aren’t there with Google, you aren’t getting in. No doubt Google’s incestuous relationship with Apple, and through that Disney, played a part in arranging this. Googlers who miss the great outdoors can still go camping, though that’s not the same as a multi-thousand-person ski trip.
Barack Obama, one of the top Democrat candidates for President in next year’s election, visited Google yesterday and talked about his technology industry platform, among other things. Here’s video of his speech:
Obama unveiled his “Innovation Agenda”, his set of principles related to the tech industry that would shape his policy if he became President. You can read them in depth here, but the bullet points are:
Ensure the Full and Free Exchange of Information through an Open Internet and Diverse Media Outlets
Protect the Openness of the Internet
Encourage Diversity in Media Ownership
Protect Our Children While Preserving the First Amendment - Obama will create Public Media 2.0, a sort of PBS for the internet age
To ensure that powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism are not misused for other purposes, Barack Obama supports restrictions on how information may be used and technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.
Obama supports updating surveillance laws and ensuring that law enforcement investigations and intelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law.
Make government data available online in universally accessible formats
Establishing pilot programs to open up government decision-making and involve the public in the work of agencies, not simply by soliciting opinions, but by tapping into the vast and distributed expertise of the American citizenry
Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public
Restoring the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials.
Lifting the veil from secret deals in Washington with a web site, a search engine, and other web tools that enable citizens easily to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials.
Giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation.
Bringing democracy and policy deliberations directly to the people by requiring his Cabinet officials to have periodic national online town hall meetings to answer questions and discuss issues before their agencies.
Employing technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networking tools, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making.
Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Redefine “broadband” in government policy as speeds considerably larger than the current 200kbps
Unleashing the Wireless Spectrum: Obama will confront the entrenched Washington interests that have kept our public airwaves from being maximized for the public’s interest.
Barack Obama believes that America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access, and Obama believes we can get true broadband to every community in America.
Lower Health Care Costs by Investing in Electronic Information Technology Systems
Double federal science and research funding for clean energy projects
Invest in the development of the next generation of biofuels
Invest in a digital smart energy grid.
Upgrade Education to Meet the Needs of the 21st Century
Obama also believes that we must strengthen math and science education
ensure that we can retain and grow high-paying jobs in fast-growing sectors in the sciences and technology rather than exporting those jobs to lower cost labor markets abroad
Modernize Public Safety Networks
doubling federal funding for basic research
Make the R&D Tax Credit Permanent
Reform Immigration
improvement in our visa programs
We should allow immigrants who earn their degrees in the U.S. to stay, work, and become Americans over time.
Promote American Businesses Abroad
Barack Obama believes we need a business and regulatory landscape in which entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive, start-ups can launch, and all enterprises can compete effectively while investors and consumers are protected against bad actors that cross the line.
Protect American Intellectual Property Abroad and at Home
Google landed anothr person running for President of the United States for its Candidates@Google series, this time Mike Gravel, former Democrat Senator from Alaska. Watch the video:
Gravel’s not a major candidate, with 1%-2% of the projected primary vote, but his appearance brings forth his unique views and helps push the trend of presidential candidates appearing at Google. Previous candidates included John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson.
Reports have revealed that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have struck up a deal that lets them use a NASA runway conveniently close to Google’s headquarters as their own personal landing strip. The deal has Page and Brin paying $1.3 million annually, plus fees for parking and gas, as well as allowing NASA to use the Googlejet 747 or other Google planes to move around equipment, scientists, or conduct high altitude research.
An unnamed former Google employee, who worked previously at Microsoft, then a startup that was bought by Google, then left Google for Microsoft, is sending around an email inside Microsoft’s corporate network giving insight to Google’s corporate culture. It’s a relatively balanced portrayal, but it wouldn’t make a lot of more mature career-oriented people work at Google, and it offers some good suggestions of changes Microsoft should make.
These kids don’t have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides nearly everything these people need from clothes (new T-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab *twice* a week!) to food – three, free, all-you-can-eat meals a day. Plus on-site health care, dental care, laundry service, gym, etc.
“20% is your benefit and your responsibility.”
In other words, it’s your job to carve out 20% of your work week for a project. If you don’t carve out the time, you don’t get it. Your project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager. Whatever it is, is owned by Google. If you’re organized, you can “save up” your 20% and use it all at once. It’s not unheard of for people to have months and months of “20% time” saved up.
Most people don’t actually have a 20% project. Most managers won’t remind you to start one.
Google believes that developers are, with few exceptions, interchangeable parts. This philosophy shows through in their office arrangements which in Mountain View are all over the map. There are glass-walled offices, there are open-space areas, there are cubicles, there are people who’s desks are literally in hallways because there’s no room anywhere else. There are even buildings that experiment with no pre-defined workspaces or workstations – cogs (err, people?) just take one of the available machines and desks when they get to work.
In terms of employees per square-foot, every Microsoft Building 9-sized office is a triple at Google.
Google doesn’t seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They’re wrong.
here is no career development plan from individual contributor to manager. Basically if you get good reviews, you get more money and a fancier title (“Senior Software Engineer II”) but that’s about it.
That single benefit gets people to work earlier because hot breakfast is served only until 8:30. And since dinner isn’t served until 6:00 or 6:30 the people with a home-life tend to skip it.
Google actually pays less salary than Microsoft.
Google’s health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft’s.
Google has no facility for career growth.
I encourage reading the comments, which contain a number of angy Microsoft employees, unhappy this was published externally. It’s not so much that the email is embarassing for Microsoft (it isn’t), but that the violation of internal privacy scares many employees.
UPDATE: The Microsoft email was written by a Microsoft recruiter based on a conversation with a Microsoft employee. The employee formerly started Phatbits, a widget engine Google acquired a year and a half ago. That makes the employee likely Mike Harrington, Darrin Massena, or Jonathan Sposato, whoever currently works at Microsoft. Read more at Mary Jo Foley’s blog.
A popular Google employee, Vanessa Fox, has left the building. Fox, who was a frequent conference speaker and enjoyed a high profile while working on the Webmaster Central team, leaves the Goog for the confines of Zillow, a real estate startup that has been enjoying some healthy buzz. Fox, who was popular among the SEO community, leaves Google with one less voice towards its most vocal constituency, and she will be missed.
Question: Why are SEOs so much more vocal than all the other people who have to work with/against Google? Even AdWords advertisers, AdSense publishers and mashup developers don’t push for as many answers from Google and create mini-celebrities out of Google conference speakers. If everyone was like the SEO community, Joel Webber would have legions of fans, or something.
The Official Google Blog has an interest post today about U.S. immigration laws, saying that the “artificially low cap” on H-1B visas, which allow foreign workers to work in the U.S. on a temporary basis, is hurting Google and the tech economy as a whole.
Congress, terrified of the evil scourge of illegal immigrants (who, you know, jump fences and use boats, often not visas), allows only 65,000 H-1B visas per year. Now, you may think that 65,000 should be more than enough, but Google’s got a stat that explains the problem: In the first two days of this year’s filing period, 133,000 applications were filed. Yeah, so the system is basically screwed out of helping qualified professionals seek U.S. jobs, and as a result Google says it has prevented 70 qualified people from getting their visas and working at Google.
If a multi-billion dollar technology company is complaining about not being able to get skilled workers in the country (I mean, it’s not like these people are going to work in the meatpacking district), then the system isn’t working right for the economy. The politicians are so scared of illegal immigrants, they can’t even do something to exempt companies with highly skilled workers. How about more visas for higher paying jobs, since the type of person you’re worried about doesn’t usually make a lot of money?
Anyway, here’s a video Google just uploaded of VP of People Operations (is that what Google calls HR?) Laszlo Bock talking before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration:
By the way, it’s worth clicking on the video to check out the new YouTube embeddable player. It contains a Mac OS Dock ripoff line of icons of related videos for you to choose from, as well as the ability to click anywhere in the progress bar to start playing from there. Cool stuff.
The latest video in Google’s Authors@Google series features Terry McAuliffe, former DNC chairman and chairman of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, who spoke Monday at the Googleplex talking about his recent book.
ZDNet has a (difficult to follow) blog post in which Rebecca Donatelli at the Google-sponsored Personal Democracy Forum two weeks ago laid out the stats on John McCain’s paid search Google AdWords campaigns. Turns out McCain, a major Republican Presidential hopeful for 2008, is raking it in by catching the eye of potential donators through AdWords ads alongside Google search results. For every one dollar spent on Google ads, McCain is averaging four dollars in donations.
Now that’s some great results! I wonder how the other candidates are doing with Google ads, and if any of them are running backwards, internet-stupid campaigns devoid of search advertising. McCain obviously sees what can be accomplished through Google, though he may have gotten a personal lesson when he gave his talk at Google last month. In fact, maybe Google is inviting all these presidential candidates to speak at the Googleplex just so they can get them set up with AdWords accounts!
Meetup, the site that lets you organize groups of people with similar interests, has posted a funny comparison of their corporate culture with Google’s (on Google Docs, no less!). It compares everything from company goals (organizing information versus organizing people), headquarters (Mountain View, California vs. New York City) and even toilets (electronic Rear Cleansing via touchpad vs. - uh - a regular toilet).
Of course, their main argument is one that just stings:
At Google, a few Googlers wish they were at a fast-growing company where they can personally still make a huge difference.
At Meetup, some Meetuppers wish we had a toilet like the Googleplex.
Over and over, they hammer home that Googlers are cogs, that there isn’t much of a difference that they can make, that Google wants their employees to only interact with other Googlers and never leave the campus. To some extent, every point is true, but there are plenty of Googlers for whom life at Google is great, and at least some that are innovating and changing the world. Then again, if the sad truths are true for thousands of Googlers, is that just the way reality works, or is it a problem?
(via Valleywag)
Google’s Doodle 4 Google competition, in which schoolchildren are given the opportunity to draw a logo for Google’s homepage, has 
