The Official Google Blog

Happy 40th birthday Sesame Street!

2009-11-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe, but today marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street! Over the past four decades, Sesame Street has been entertaining and educating children all across the world. To pay tribute to the colorful cast of characters, we've been delighted to feature some of your favorites on the Google homepage during the past week. With this effort, we're honored to help support Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization behind Sesame Street. It's always great to see the spotlight on children's education, and we hope you enjoyed the homepage doodles as much as we did.

And, we have an exciting birthday surprise — for this very special celebration, we're happy to share a high-resolution gallery that includes all of the Sesame Street doodles for you to download. Almost as fun as the doodles themselves, there's even a sneak peak into the photo shoot that yielded today's doodle. As an added bonus, you'll also find a few extra characters that spent some time in other countries.

From Oscar to Elmo, the whole gang had a ton of fun hanging out with Google this week. So, enjoy the full series again, change your desktop background, hang them around your desk, and join us in celebrating Sesame Street!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Fifty states of Street View

2009-11-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state admitted to the union. Today, 50 years later, we're including Hawaii as the 50th state in Street View on Google Maps. With our imagery of Oahu and Maui, you can now take a virtual vacation to white sandy beaches, revisit special places from your honeymoon, or plan your next getaway. We've worked with the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau to create collections in our new Street View Gallery featuring Hawaii's best beaches and hometown favorites of President Obama.

Being born and raised on Oahu, I like to think we saved the best for last. I'll get you started with a tour around some of my favorite places from home.

Waimea Bay is famous for 30-foot winter waves. In the summer, as you can see in Street View, it transforms into a calm bay for snorkeling and swimming:

View Larger Map

If you're a history buff, you can also visit Iolani Palace, a national historic landmark that was the official residence of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s last two monarchs:

View Larger Map

This is just a small taste of all the beautiful sights in the Aloha State. Check out the gallery to see even more stunning high-resolution imagery. And now that we have imagery from all 50 states in the U.S., we've created tours of the 50 state capitol buildings for the gallery.

One of the great things about Street View is that it lets you virtually wander the streets of a diverse range of cities around the world, whether you want to gaze up at the Tokyo Tower in Japan or explore ancient Roman ruins in Italy. In addition to expanding our coverage in the U.S., today we're also adding imagery from Mexico for the first time, covering Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel:

View Larger Map

As we keep working to bring Street View to new countries and cities across the globe, we want to hear directly from you about the places that you want to see featured in Street View next. A few weeks ago, we asked you to submit your nominations for places that you want our Street View trike to visit. We combed through more than 25,000 submissions and today we're unveiling the finalists. You can read more about the competition and the finalists on the Lat Long blog, and head to www.google.com/trike to cast your votes for the special locations we should add to Google Maps next.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager

Investing in a mobile future with AdMob

2009-11-09T09:15:00.000-08:00

We're happy to announce today that we have signed an agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display advertising company based in San Mateo, CA. AdMob is a great Silicon Valley story — founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui when he couldn't find good ways to generate traffic for his mobile site. Over the past few years, Omar and his talented team have built a thriving company with great mobile advertising products, and we are looking forward to having them join the Google team and work with us on the future of mobile advertising.

We've written in the past about how mobile phones are becoming an increasingly indispensable part of our daily lives, and we continue to see how great devices with full Internet browsers and vibrant app marketplaces are driving an explosion of usage. In fact:

iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google's 5x mobile search growth over the past two years
And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]

Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal.

For publishers of mobile websites and applications, this deal will mean better products and tools and more effective monetization of their content — allowing them to focus more on their users and less on how to generate revenue.

For advertisers who want to reach users when they are engaged with mobile content, this deal will bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. It will also mean more interesting, engaging ad formats.

Last, but certainly not least, we believe users will benefit from this deal — through more mobile content and through better mobile ads that deliver useful information. And that's good for all of us. For more information, check out this site that we've set up about the deal.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management and Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering

Google Apps highlights 11/6/2009

2009-11-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

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.

Individuals, businesses and schools are switching to Google Apps to communicate more efficiently from anywhere, collaborate without the hassle of attachments, save money, and get continuous innovation. Because you use Google Apps in your browser, improvements like new features in Google forms show up automatically. Starting today, we'll post a recap every couple of weeks highlighting significant improvements we've made in Google Apps, and major milestones in this area, similar to our weekly series on Search. We hope this helps you experience what's new for yourself!

More interface consistency across Google Docs
We heard your feedback about design inconsistencies in the user interfaces for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and we agree; having a more consistent user interface is a better experience. Last week we rolled out a batch of changes making the links, title area, menus, menu terminology and toolbar more uniform. We think this will make it easier to find commonly used functions, speed up your experience with Google Docs and make you more productive in these browser-based applications.

Customizable options for Gmail offline
Gmail offline lets you work with your email from the browser even when you don't have an internet connection, but until now, you couldn't specify how much old mail you wanted to cache for offline access. On Wednesday we launched new options for Gmail offline, and now you can configure how much of your old email is available when you don't have a connection. Once you enable Offline Gmail from the Labs tab in Settings, go to the Offline settings tab to customize which labels are synchronized, how far back messages are included, and which attachments you'll be able to access offline in your browser.

Google Docs bulk export
We firmly believe it should be easy to move files saved on your computer into the cloud, and that you should be able to move your data out of Google Apps whenever you want. After all, it's your data, and you should be able to do what you want with it. In the spirit of Data Liberation, last week we made it even easier for you to pull your documents, spreadsheets, forms, presentations and PDFs out of Google Docs with "Convert, Zip and Download". Just select the files in Google Docs that you want to save, go to 'More Actions' > 'Export', then choose your preferred output file formats. Your items will be saved to your computer in a tidy zip file.

Visual indicators for edited and all-new items in Google Docs
The shared items in your Google Docs account evolve as the people you collaborate with make edits and share new items with you. This is fundamentally different from how it works with files saved on your computer. Last week we started showing visual indicators in Google Docs to make it easier to spot what's changed and what's been newly shared with you. The names of files that have been edited since you lasted opened them are in bold, and shared files that you haven't opened yet have a red 'New!' tag.

Administrator controls for Chat
Companies and schools using Google Apps sometimes want to limit how their users communicate with Google Talk and Gmail Chat. For example, some K12 schools don't want outsiders instant messaging with their students. To meet this need, we now let IT administrators select if their users should only be able to chat with each other, and not with external users. This new option is found in the Chat service settings area of the Premier and Education Edition control panels.

Over two million businesses have gone Google
Companies around the world are moving to the cloud with Google Apps, and we just crossed the two million customers milestone. To hear how Google Apps is bringing faster innovation to employees, eliminating major hassles for IT managers and saving companies big bucks, read some of their quotes or visit out our YouTube customer channel.

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

Posted by Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product Management and Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise

This week in search 11/6/09

2009-11-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

This week we brought out some new search tools for the phone and for the web. We also enhanced our universal search with a better interface for product results.

Multiple pictures of products in Universal Search
We've added multiple images to product results in Universal Search. On broader queries, this helps you get a sense of the range of products available to you for the query. Here's what it looks like:

Example searches: digital cameras, pin nailer, glider, bouncy house, outdoor dining set

Search Options panel now has page previews and is live in more languages
We have added a new tool to the Search Options panel called page previews, currently available in English, Japanese and Korean. Page previews allow you to see additional text as well as an image preview of the page. This is a new way to summarize web pages that show up in the search results list. In the interest of keeping the Search Options panel interface simple, we've combined page previews with the earlier tool for longer snippets — both serve a very similar purpose and, we feel, work well together. Here you can see a screenshot of the new feature at work:

The Search Options panel is also now available in 11 new languages: Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai and Turkish.

Google search by voice for Nokia S60 phones in English and Mandarin Chinese
On Monday we announced that Google search by voice is available for Nokia S60 phones in English and Mandarin Chinese. The new version of Google Mobile App places a shortcut to Google search on your Nokia phone's home screen, allowing you to search using your voice or by typing. You can search for anything — from "movie times" to "fish 'n chips" to "masala dosa." And Google Mobile App shows search results in the application, so you don't have to wait for a web browser to launch to get an answer. This feature is available in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

Sesame Street doodle
In honor of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary on November 10th, the Google homepage has had a daily sequence of doodles created in partnership with Sesame Street around the favorite characters on the show — starting, of course, with Big Bird.

Hope you enjoyed this week's new features. Stay tuned for next week!

Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

Even more music for you to find with Google search

2009-11-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Last week, we launched a new music search feature, which helps you search and discover millions of songs with a simple Google search. When you search for an artist, song, album or even a few lyrics, you'll find links to our partner sites — putting you just one click away from listening to and purchasing the music you're looking for.

To celebrate our launch, MySpace and Lala are hosting exclusive, never-before-heard tracks from a variety of artists — and we're helping people to find those tracks through a simple Google search. So if you're a Lady Gaga fan looking for a new remix, in love with the Arctic Monkeys and looking for something extra or hunting for a new acoustic track from YouTube sensation Zee Avi, just search for it. You'll find links to these tracks right in your regular search results. And when you click the links, you'll be able to hear the songs directly from MySpace and Lala.

We know how much you care about music, and we're excited to partner with Lala and MySpace to help you discover more music from artists you love, using Google. To see the full list of tracks and read more, check out the blogposts on Lala and MySpace. We hope you enjoy the music.

Posted by R.J. Pittman, Director, Product Management

Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard!

2009-11-05T02:15:00.000-08:00

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard. Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account? The Google Dashboard offers a simple view into the data associated with your account — easily and concisely in one location.

Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data. In the past, we've taken numerous steps in this area, investing in educating our users with our Privacy Center, making it easier to move data in and out of Google with our Data Liberation Front, and allowing you to control the ads you see with interest-based advertising. Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy, and today, we're happy to announce that we're doing even more.

In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over your own data, we've built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we're delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard. Watch this quick video to learn more and then try it out for yourself at www.google.com/dashboard.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Software Engineer, Yariv Adan, Product Manager, and Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience

Introducing Google Commerce Search: Finding holiday gifts faster

2009-11-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is right around the corner, so online retailers are gearing up for spikes in traffic. When people go to shop online, search is big part of finding the right product, whether they're looking for a gift or just something for themselves. Today we're aiming to make e-commerce searching as easy as using Google.com with a new enterprise product, Google Commerce Search.

Search quality is a big factor in changing visitors to buyers online, and in making customers happy too. Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website, so having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers. Google Commerce Search is hosted by and uses Google search technology to make online retail searching both fast and customizable — visitors to your online store can sort by category, price, brand or any other attribute. E-store administrators can highlight special products or connect related ones so searching is easier for their customers. Google Commerce Search includes a built-in spellchecker and synonyms so if visitors can't remember exactly how to spell the particular toy or perfume or anything else they're hunting for, Google Commerce Search will make some suggestions. Choosing the right one is up to them, though.

Google Commerce Search is hosted in the cloud, meaning it lives online, so e-commerce sites can get up and running quickly. Using a cloud search tool will also help site owners meet the rise in demand from the holiday rush without having to devote extra time or resources to worrying about their capacity or infrastructure. Online retailers are free to focus on their business, while Google focuses on search, and shoppers can find what they need faster.

For more information check out google.com/commercesearch.

Posted by Alex Dovlecel and Nicholas Weininger, Engineers, Google Commerce Search

Google Friend Connect, now more personalized

2009-11-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted with the Social Web Blog)

On the subway, I bump elbows with a guy for 20 city blocks without exchanging a single word. Forty-five minutes later, I find the same guy at the local guitar shop, and we start to talk — turns out he plays a Gibson Les Paul just like I do. We may have been strangers on the train, but in the guitar shop, we discover our shared passion for guitars.

Often, the web can feel like that subway. There are probably people commuting to the places you regularly visit, but you don’t know who those people are, and your paths may never cross. With Google Friend Connect, we've been helping millions of website owners make their sites more like that guitar shop — a social place where visitors can get to know each other — and less like the anonymous subway ride.

With this in mind, we're thrilled to introduce a new set of Friend Connect features that let site owners help their visitors get to know each other and personalize their site's experience and content.

Break the ice
Visitors to your site can get to know each other better by sharing details about themselves that are relevant to the site they're on. As a site owner, you can help them do this by visiting the new "Interests" section of your Friend Connect account, where you can add site-relevant questions that people can answer when joining your website or via the poll gadget. For instance, if you have a music website, you might ask people to share their favorite bands, the last concert they attended, or where they discover new music. Or if you run a hiking site, you can ask them about a favorite hike or national park. The details people share are added to their Friend Connect public profiles for your site, which are seen by other site visitors. This way, your visitors can learn more about each other in the context of the interests that bring them to your website.

We've also added the ability for people to send private messages to each other. That way, when a user discovers someone who shares their interests, they can send a message to that person via their Friend Connect profile to start a dialogue.

And as with any data you collect on Friend Connect, you can use open export tools and APIs to integrate this information with any other systems you might use. The interests people share on your website are also made available in the new "Community data" section of your account in the form of easy-to-read charts.

Personalize your website experience
The ice-breaking isn't limited to your visitors; you'll learn more about them too. The interests people share make it possible for you to create a more personalized experience on your website in a number of ways:

Send custom newsletters: The new "Newsletter" section of your account lets you create, send and manage newsletters. And with the help of "Interests," you can either send out newsletters to all your subscribers, or send out custom newsletters to different segments of your subscribers, based on the interest responses they submit.
Personalized content gadget: This new Friend Connect gadget automatically presents a dynamic personalized set of links to your site's content that matches each visitor's specific interests. Is a visitor learning how to play swing music? Links to articles your site has published about playing swing are presented to him or her.
Google ads: For those of you who display ads on your website, your Friend Connect account now includes an "AdSense" section that lets you enable Google ad units that are matched both to your site's content and to the interests users publicly share on your website.

All these new features are easy to implement and require no coding whatsoever. Here's a quick tour of what Friend Connect now has to offer:

If you'd like to see the new features in action, check out some of our partners' sites, like sfstation.com, huffingtonpost.com, metrolyrics.com and pachakam.com.

We're excited to see the web evolve into a place where visitors of all websites can get to know each other — to share and discuss the things they care about most. To get started with Friend Connect, visit http://google.com/friendconnect.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager, Google Friend Connect

A la peanut butter sandwiches!

2009-11-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

Google doodles celebrate events and anniversaries around the world, while reflecting the personality, interests and quirkiness of Google employees. Today, you likely noticed a pair of familiar feet on the Google homepage. Leading up to Sesame Street's 40th anniversary on November 10th, we're excited to be featuring some of our favorite characters over the next seven days. Today: Big Bird!

Many Googlers grew up on Sesame Street, watching the colorful, seamless blend of education and entertainment. We're delighted to have partnered with Sesame Street to create this special series of doodles, particularly since we share the same values of education, diversity and accessibility. And here's a fun find from the crew at Sesame; they found a little known video clip of Cookie Monster singing about Google (rhyming it with bugle) way back in 1982 — 16 years before our company even existed.

So, happy 40th anniversary, Sesame Street. For those Sesame lovers out there, be sure to check back as we'll feature a different character each day.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience

Cutting back on your long list of passwords

2009-11-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

Does anyone actually like passwords? Most people can't stand them because they end up having to keep track of a long (and often memorized) list of usernames and passwords to sign into the websites they visit. Website owners hate them because it's hard to get people to create a new account on their website, and almost half of those account registrations are never completed. Thanks to the utilization of new technology, we're now seeing large-scale success in eliminating the need for passwords while increasing the successful registration rate at websites to over 90%. The most visible examples come from Plaxo, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google using a technique the industry calls hybrid onboarding. In the past, if you're a Gmail user who got an invitation to use Plaxo or Facebook, you were asked to perform the traditional process of creating a new account with yet another password, and then you might also have been asked to provide the password of your email account so Plaxo or Facebook could look up the list of your friends. With hybrid onboarding, if you click on such an invitation in your Gmail, you'll see a page like one of these:

Clicking the large button on the Plaxo page takes you to a page at Google like this:

If you give consent to share a few pieces of information, you are sent back to Plaxo with all key registration steps finished.

The registration process used to involve more than 10 steps, including requiring you to find one of those "email validation" messages in your inbox. If you've followed the steps above, you can now sign into Plaxo more easily — by simply clicking a button.

While Plaxo showed the first successful results of this technique in early 2009, other companies like Facebook are starting to use the same model and to recognize its business value potential. At the same time, the hybrid onboarding model improves authentication security because websites like Plaxo that use this technique never see a password from you at all. Since you don't have to enter your password on additional sites, your password remains closer to you and is less likely to be misused. We'd like to applaud Plaxo and Facebook's work in designing the user experience needed for this technique as well as pushing us to create the optimizations needed to carry out their design. Today we're happy to announce that all of these login flow designs are now available to any website operator. All of these hybrid onboarding techniques are based on industry standards that both Google and Yahoo! support, and that other email providers are beginning to support as well. For more technical details, check out our Google Code Blog post.

Hybrid onboarding is also being used by Enterprise Software-as-a-Service vendors — such as ZoHo — that want to eliminate the need for employees at their customers' businesses to create another password. More details are available on our Enterprise Blog. In addition, after a thorough evaluation of the security and privacy of these technologies, the same techniques are being piloted by President Obama's open identity initiative to enable citizens to sign in more easily to government-operated websites.

There is still a long way to go before you'll be able to trim down your long list of website passwords, but this progress demonstrates the potential for even the largest websites to adopt to adopt the hybrid onboarding model. We hope many other websites will follow.

Posted by Eric Sachs, Product Manager, Google Security

Investing in innovation at Google

2009-11-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

Eric said during our third quarter earnings call that "innovation is the technological pre-condition for growth." He was talking about the kind of innovation that's only possible when you can attract and retain the world's finest minds. Some come to Google through acquisition, like the people who created Google Earth (formerly Keyhole), or the folks at Android Inc. — but most innovation coming out of Google is homegrown.

A good example is Google Chrome, which in only a year, has more than 30 million active users. Larry and Sergey recently gave the Chrome team a Founders Award, a multimillion-dollar stock bonus shared by the Googlers who worked across functions and regions to create and launch that product. As its name suggests, this award is presented by our founders to celebrate the kind of large-scale, game-changing achievements that Google stands for. The Chrome team joined a long list of teams — including Gmail, AdSense for Content, Google Maps and parts of our sales and marketing units — who have won this award (and could win again!).

We want to continue to create products that rethink industry standards, challenge the status quo and make people's lives easier — and we know that there are great minds out there with the same goal. Recently, we announced that we're starting to ramp up hiring for positions across the company, continuing our investment in the future as we imagine it. That future is shaped by small teams of creative people who want to make a difference. We're on the hunt for these kind of people — let us know if you think you're one of them.

Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering & Research

Next steps in cyber security awareness

2009-11-02T12:43:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Public Policy blog)

Last week I joined several industry experts to speak at a cyber security panel on Capitol Hill organized by Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and sponsored by the Committee on Homeland Security. The conversation focused on things everyday Internet users can do to help protect their computers and stay safe online. Given that we just wrapped up our observation of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, I thought I'd share some of the key recommendations from the panel:

What are the most important things we all need to do to protect our computers and mobile devices?
You should have the same expectations when using the Internet as you would when exploring a city: you don't give your credit card to the person selling watches on the street just because you recognize the brand, you don't let your kids wander around by themselves and you don't give personal information unless you know who's getting it. If an offer is "urgent" or seems too good to be true, take a step back and research the offer. Add a password to your mobile phone, and browse cautiously on open WiFi networks as you would when using a computer.

What are the most common misconceptions about cyber security?
Many dangerous websites are not designed to be dangerous. In fact, most of the sites that serve malware (malicious software) are innocent sites that have been compromised in one way or another. Your computer isn't necessarily safe just because you're avoiding sites that contain adult content or pirated software. Use reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and keep your computer operating system and applications updated with the latest software versions.

How do I know if my computer or network has been compromised?
First, disconnect it from the Internet. Take note of any slowness, and if you're not sure how to proceed, get someone with technical expertise to check your network logs for high traffic appearing during times when you're not using the computer. When in doubt, contact a computer support expert.

As President Obama recently stated, cyber security is a shared responsibility. At Google, we recognize how important awareness and education are because many online security threats can only be avoided if we work together.

We spent the month of October exploring cyber security and talking about how to use Google products in a more secure manner. If you haven't seen them already, take a look at the posts we've released over the last month:

Be sure to share the tips you find most helpful with others, and remember to stay safe online.

Posted by Eric Davis, Head of Anti-Malvertising

Google Search by voice travels the world, finds Nokia, learns Chinese

2009-11-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog)

Google Search by voice has grown up quickly. Some might say that search by voice has matured from a toddler to a tween. It's certainly been traveling across the English-speaking world and getting better at understanding a range of accents, from the US, U.K., India and Australia. Today it's taking another big step — we're happy to announce that Google search by voice is available for Nokia S60 phones, and now understands Mandarin Chinese.

Nokia S60 phones are popular around the world. If you have an Nseries or Eseries phone such as the N95 or E71, you're using S60. Many of these phones have 12-digit keypads — good for making calls, but not so easy when you need to type a few words. Many of you have asked if we could build our search by voice feature for these phones, and we've been working on this feature for a while.

The new version of Google Mobile App places a shortcut to Google search on your Nokia phone's home screen, allowing you to search using your voice or by typing. You can search for anything — from "movie times", to "fish 'n chips", to "masala dosa." It doesn't matter if you're in London or Bangalore: we'll use your location to give you nearby results. And Google Mobile App shows search results in the application, so you don't have to wait for a web browser to launch to get an answer.

We always use Google products ourselves before we share them with users. We like to think of this process as "eating our own dogfood" and you can see a video of some early testing here.

Up until now voice search has only been available in English, but the new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 devices works for Mandarin speakers, too. We're really proud of the work we've done with Mandarin speech recognition, both because it's the most spoken language in the world, and because of the engineering challenge. To get Mandarin speech recognition to work, we had to learn a lot about this fascinating language — the differences between traditional and simplified Chinese, its tonal characteristics, automatic segmentation of text into words, pinyin representations of Chinese characters, sandhi rules, the different accents and languages in China, unicode representations of Chinese character sets...the list goes on and on.

Mandarin speakers can now search by voice for complex queries like 清华大学附近的水煮鱼 (which translates to "water-boiled fish near Tsinghua University"). Although this only works on the Nokia S60 at the moment, we're working on adding support for Mandarin speech recognition to our products on other mobile platforms, such as Android and iPhone. And bear in mind that this is a first version of our system in Mandarin, and it might not be as polished as our English version. For example, if you have a strong southern Chinese accent, it might not work as well as for people with a Beijing accent. However, our system will improve over time, so please give it a try!

Google Mobile App in Mandarin Chinese

Note that the application is for version 3 of Nokia S60 — more recent phones running version 5 (touch screen) are not yet supported.

To download the new version of Google Mobile App on your Nokia S60 phone, visit m.google.com from your phone's browser.

Posted by Elke Michlmayr, Software Engineer

This week in search 10/30/09

2009-10-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "This week in search" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

The week leading up to Halloween has brought a flood of new treats for you.

Music Search
On Wednesday, we rolled out our new music search feature, fully integrated into Google's web search. Now, when you search for a band, singer, song name, or album title, Google will recognize it and return a special music result on the top of the page. These new special music results do exactly what you want - they let you listen to the full song. To provide this feature, we have partnered with Lala and MySpace (formerly iLike) to bring you full-song streaming. That's not all, however. The real "wow" in this new music feature is that you can type in phrases of lyrics, we recognize the song - and bring you the song for full play. You can listen, verify it's the one you were looking for, and then continue on to buy the song on iMeem, iLike, Lala, Pandora, or Rhapsody.

Example searches (singers): Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Jack Johnson, Michael Jackson
Example searches (band): Coldplay, TV on the Radio, The Killers, MGMT, The Rolling Stones

Example searches (song): Sample in a Jar, Waiting for the World to Change, When Doves Cry, All I Want for Christmas is You, Walking on Sunshine
Example searches (album): Dark Side of the Moon, Achtung Baby, Aqualung, Evil Urges
Example searches (lyrics): gonna be a good night tonight, can feel the hand of fate, lucky we're in love in every way, take away this ball and chain

Social Search
On Monday, we introduced Social Search on Google Labs and Google Experimental. Social Search finds relevant content that your social circle has published and returns that content with your web search results. What defines your social circle? To use Social Search, you need to be logged in to your Google Account and opted in to the Social Search experiment. We then analyze your Gmail contacts (if you have a Gmail account) and the connections on your social networks (if you have a Google Profile and have listed public social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed). What kind of results do we find? Our Social Search results include blogs, photo albums, web pages, and reviews. This way, you not only seeing the most relevant content on the web globally, but you also see the content most relevant and personal to you.

To try Google Social Search, go to Google Experimental and click the "Join the experiment" button pertaining to social search. Then try searching on Google for something your friends may have written about. Example searches like 'restaurant' or 'vacation' tend to occur in people's personal writings. Social Search results always occur at the bottom of the page, so scroll to the end of the page to see these results. You can also trigger Social Search results explicitly by opening the Search Options panel and clicking on 'Social'. This will cause all of your results to be from your social circle.

Similar Images on Image Search
In addition to our new features on core web search this week, we introduced a new and revolutionary way to refine image searches to our main image search functionality this week. The feature is called "Similar Images". We've had it for a while as a separate site, but it has proved so useful and interesting that we decided to make it part of our core image search. The idea here is to find an image that you like and then click the "Find similar images" link below it. This may seem simple, but think about all the complicated things you can express. For example, if I wanted a picture of a single turtle swimming, and I wanted the turtle to be headed to the left rather than the right, it would be almost impossible to express as a keyword search. Now with "Similar Images" features, I can simply do an image search for turtles, then find an image that meets my requirements, like the seventh image on that results page, and by clicking the "Find similar images" underneath it, I get a page composed of solo turtles actively swimming.

Example search: jack-o-lanterns, then click on "Find similar images" under the fifth image to get jack-o-lanterns lit from within in night-time settings
Example search: birthday hat, then click on "Find similar images" under the second image to get multi-colored birthday hats
Example search: peacock, then select "Find similar images" on the third image to get white peacocks with their feathers displayed

Personalized Search on Mobile
This week we also introduced personalized search for the mobile phone. Personalized search has been available on our website for some time. Now, when you are logged in on your phone, you get the same personalized search results on your mobile phone as well.

Google Suggest now global
Internationally, we also rolled out Google Suggest on our search results pages. Now, the helpful suggestions that you see when you begin typing on our homepage and results page are available on 156 country domains and in 52 more languages.

And to wish you a Happy Halloween, trick-or-treat us by visiting the homepage (www.google.com) today and clicking on the Google logo.

Hope you enjoyed this week's features. Stay tuned for what's next!

Posted by VP, Search Products & User Experience

A ghooooulish Googleween

2009-10-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

When it comes to holidays, Halloween is one of our favorites. You get candy corn, creepy crawlies, ghosts and goblins, blustery weather and the goopy joys of pumpkin carving all crammed into one glorious fall fun-fest. It's also the one holiday where you can dress up as whatever you want — your favorite celebrity, your favorite animal or even, like one Googler last year, your favorite gadget.

As usual, we're in the process of devising brilliant last-minute costumes, and we got curious about what others around the globe have been searching for in preparation for Halloween.

We used Insights for Search to track the fastest-rising searches related to [costume] in the U.S. in 2009. The query at the top of the charts is [lady gaga costume] — no surprise, as the star wears quite a few costumes on a regular basis herself:

And many people seem to be planning a tribute to the late pop star Michael Jackson — searches for [michael jackson costume] started spiking in June of this year and have increased steadily since then:

Since Halloween is most popular in the U.S., we focused on queries there — but we did investigate searches in Canada and the U.K. for good measure. In Canada, people are overwhelmingly searching for costumes for two — variations on [couples costumes] dominate the top 10. Both in Canada and across the pond, searchers are looking for costumes based on Lewis Carroll's classic story Alice in Wonderland, with [mad hatter costume] in the top 10 in the U.K. and [alice in wonderland] in Canada.

Since [vampire costume] was one of the top 10 searches this year, we figured we'd check in with the various vampire TV shows and movies to see which is, um, making a killing in the costume race. The query [twilight costume] has the most search volume, with [true blood costume] not far behind. (Pointy teeth and body glitter — done!)

Thinking of dressing up your little ones? Popular queries in the U.S. related to [kids costume] include [ladybug], [minnie mouse] and [tinkerbell].

We also did some digging to see if people were taking inspiration from the movie Where the Wild Things Are and wearing a [max costume] this year. Based on the fastest-rising related terms [footie pajamas], [footed pajamas] and [max costume pattern], it seems like at least a few folks are choosing to make [max wolf suit] costumes at home:

As a dog-friendly company, we share the country-wide impulse to dress up our dogs for the holiday. Related searches for [taco dog costume], [dog shark costume] and [banana costume] (so cute!) all rank high.

At Google, we've been gearing up for tomorrow's real deal with festivities on our Mountain View campus, complete with Halloween crafts for visiting kids and a haunted house. Googlers are also pulling out all the stops for the costume contest:

We hope you have a happy Googleween!

Posted by Jordan Newman and Emily Wood, Editors, Google Blog team

Three contest winners making their way to television

2009-10-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Google TV Ads Blog)

Small businesses often think that television advertising is too expensive and cumbersome for them to use. They assume that they need a fancy, expensive commercial to use in their TV campaign. But Google TV Ads changes all of that — we make it easy and affordable for you to make a TV ad, plan a campaign and reach your customers through the power of television. We launched the TV for All contest two months ago to prove just that.

More than 200 companies submitted commercials for the opportunity to win $25,000 worth of free national advertising on cable channels such as CNBC, Hallmark and Bloomberg using Google TV Ads. Today, we're happy to announce the three winners of the TV for All contest based on votes from the YouTube community.

Amazing Gates, Owners.com and ZAGG.com received the largest number of votes among the 10 finalists. Each of these businesses will receive $25,000 in free national advertising through Google TV Ads advertising.

Check out the three winners and all entries at www.youtube.com/tvforallcontest. For more information on Google TV Ads and how it can help your small business succeed, visit our website at google.com/tvads.

Posted by Deeksha Hebbar, Associate Marketing Manager, Google TV Ads

Making search more musical

2009-10-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Every day we get millions of search queries about music. You want to know more about your favorite artists, find that new album or iconic song or figure out the name of that tune stuck in your head. In fact, according to Insights for Search, two of the top 10 queries in the U.S. are music-related. But often, if your answer is in a song, it can take a while to get there. We call this "time to result" — and we're always looking for ways to reduce it.

Today, we're rolling out a search feature that does just that by enabling you to search and more easily discover millions of songs, all via a simple Google web search. If you're searching for music, "time to result" is really "time to music." Now, when you enter a music-related query — like the name of a song, artist or album — your search results will include links to an audio preview of those songs provided by our music search partners MySpace (which just acquired iLike) or Lala. When you click the result you'll be able to listen to an audio preview of the song directly from one of those partners. For example, if I search for [21st century breakdown], the first results provide links to songs from Green Day's new album. MySpace and Lala also provide links to purchase the full song.

Many times, though, you don't know the name of the song or the artist who sings it. Maybe you remember only the chorus — or maybe you remember who sang it, but you forgot the exact name of the song. If you've ever heard a catchy song in a car or cafe, but just can't figure out the name of the song, you'll know what I'm talking about. This search feature also helps you find many of those songs by entering a search containing a line or two of lyrics. So if I search for [static silhouette somehow], I'll get results for Phoenix's song "Rome."

Finally, a search engine should also be able to help you discover music you'll like, even if you can't tell it what exactly you want to hear. We've partnered with Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody to include links to their sites where you can discover music related to your queries as well.

This feature doesn't just make search better. It also helps people discover new sources of licensed music online while helping artists to discover new generations of fans and reconnect with longtime listeners. Our users love music, and this tool introduces millions of music seekers in the U.S. to a new generation of licensed online music services, from MySpace and Lala to Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody.

Of course, this is just a first step toward making search more musical. There's a lot of music out there in the world, and in some instances, we may not return links to the song you're looking for. But by combining the strength of Google's search algorithms with our music search partners' efforts to increase the comprehensiveness of their music content, we're on track to answer more of your rhymes with the right rhythms.

We'll be rolling this feature out gradually to users across the U.S. over the next day. To learn more, check out this page or watch the video below. As we said back when we first announced universal search, the best answer is still the best answer, whether it's in the form of a video, an image, a magazine — or a song. And of course, the best way to know you've found the music you were looking for is to hear it. Well, let the music begin!

Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager and Ganesh Ramanarayanan, Software Engineer

Growing the next generation of computer scientists and business leaders

2009-10-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog)

We had a busy summer here at Google interacting with students through a wide variety of scholarship, internship and networking opportunities across North America. Here's a look back at a few of our programs (you can bet we'll be hosting them again!) along with news on some upcoming initiatives.

Rising college sophomores participated in two Google programs: Google FUSE, in its inaugural year, and the Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI).

For FUSE, we welcomed 50 rising college sophomores to our New York City office for a three-day retreat designed to connect students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computer science. The retreat focused on making connections between students and Googlers, encouraging students to create meaningful academic experiences and allowing them to learn more about possible career paths via hands-on activities, panel discussions and a bit of fun around the New York City area.

Another group of twenty rising sophomores spent two weeks at the Googleplex in Mountain View for the second annual Computer Science Summer Institute. This special program included an interactive and collaborative Computer Science curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. Students worked in teams to create an interactive web application using Python in Google App Engine. When not in class, they heard technical talks from Google engineers, spoke with professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a Computer Science degree. They also had some fun joining the Bay Area summer interns on a boat cruise and catching a baseball game after an exciting San Francisco scavenger hunt.

In addition, our engineering internship program hosted more than 450 college (undergraduate and graduate) interns in 15 locations across North America. These interns were an integral part of the engineering team and made significant contributions this summer working on exciting projects including Android, Chrome, Docs and machine translation.

We also had more than 100 students working across multiple functions, including sales and engineering in Mountain View, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston as part of the Building Opportunities for Leadership and Development (BOLD) Program. BOLD is a 10-week internship program designed to provide exposure to the technology industry for students from groups that are historically underrepresented in technology. This summer experience includes a unique glimpse into a business or engineering career, professional development and leadership courses, as well as one-on-one mentorship designed to further support professional growth.

Of course, we realize that growing future leaders in engineering and business doesn't just start with college students. For this reason, we partner with the LEAD programs in both business and engineering to encourage outstanding high school students to pursue careers in these fields. This year, all four LEAD Summer Engineering Institute participants had the opportunity to tour a local Google office to attend technical talks and interact with Google engineers (okay, with some tasty food and video games thrown in as well).

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to recognizing student achievements and promoting leadership, we also offer a number of academic scholarships. We are currently accepting applications for the Google Lime Scholarship for Student with Disabilities in the U.S. and Canada, and the Anita Borg Scholarship in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the United States. In case you're curious, we offer a host of scholarships for many other international regions.

If one or more of these opportunities sounds like something you'd like to participate in, you can find applications for full time opportunities and summer internship opportunities on our student job site. Visit our scholarship page for more information on our scholarship opportunities. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on application deadlines and new program announcements.

Making an early connection playing People Bingo at Google FUSE.

Taking a break from bowling during Google FUSE.

Posted by Kyle Ewing, Talent and Outreach Programs - University Programs and Recruiting

Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0

2009-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted with the Google Mobile Blog)

Since 2005, millions of people have relied on Google Maps for mobile to get directions on the go. However, there's always been one problem: Once you're behind the wheel, a list of driving directions just isn't that easy to use. It doesn't tell you when your turn is coming up. And if you miss a turn? Forget it, you're on your own.

Today we're excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

This new feature comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection.

Here are seven features that are possible because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet:

The most recent map and business data
When you use Google Maps Navigation, your phone automatically gets the most up-to-date maps and business listings from Google Maps — you never need to buy map upgrades or update your device. And this data is continuously improving, thanks to users who report maps issues and businesses who activate their listings with Google Local Business Center.

Search in plain English
Google Maps Navigation brings the speed, power and simplicity of Google search to your car. If you don't know the address you're looking for, don't worry. Simply enter the name of a business, a landmark or just about anything into the search box, and Google will find it for you. Then press "Navigate", and you're on your way.

Search by voice
Typing on a phone can be difficult, especially in the car, so with Google Maps Navigation, you can say your destination instead. Hold down the search button to activate voice search, then tell your phone what you want to do (like "Navigate to Pike Place in Seattle"), and navigation will start automatically.

Traffic view
Google Maps Navigation gets live traffic data over the Internet. A traffic indicator light in the corner of the screen glows green, yellow or red, depending on the current traffic conditions along your route. If there's a jam ahead of you, you'll know. To get more details, tap the light to zoom out to an aerial view showing traffic speeds and incidents ahead. And if the traffic doesn't look good, you can choose an alternate route.

Search along route
For those times when you're already on the road and need to find a business, Google Maps Navigation searches along your route to give you results that won't take you far from your path. You can search for a specific business by name or by type, or you can turn on popular layers, such as gas stations, restaurants or parking.

Satellite view
Google Maps Navigation uses the same satellite imagery as Google Maps on the desktop to help you get to your destination. Turn on the satellite layer for a high-resolution, 3D view of your upcoming route. Besides looking cool, satellite view can help you make sense of complicated maneuvers.

Street View
If you want to know what your next turn looks like, double-tap the map to zoom into Street View, which shows the turn as you'll see it, with your route overlaid. And since locating an address can sometimes be tricky, we'll show you a picture of your destination as you approach the end of your route, so you'll know exactly what to look for.

Since there's nothing quite like seeing the product in action, we made this video to demonstrate a real-life example:

The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon. Google Maps Navigation is initially available in the United States. And like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.

Check out the Google Maps Navigation page to learn more and browse a gallery of product screenshots. Take Google Maps Navigation for a spin, and bring Internet-connected GPS navigation with you in your car.

Posted by Keith Ito, Software Engineer

Similar Images graduates from Google Labs

2009-10-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

Today, we're happy to announce that Similar Images is graduating from Google Labs and becoming a permanent feature in Google Images. You can try it out by clicking on "Find similar images" below the most popular images in our search results. For example, if you search for jaguar, you can use the "Find similar images" link to find more pictures of the car or the animal.

When we revamped Labs in April, we also launched Similar Images to highlight some of the innovative work our engineers have been working on. Google Labs gives us a way to get some of our new ideas in front of you early in the process, refine them based on your feedback and see what sticks. Your support has helped to make Similar Images the first major feature to graduate from Google Labs since its recent overhaul.

So, let's say you want to find images of Ancient Egypt. Google Images will provide you with a rich variety of results, including pyramids, maps, relics, drawings and other types of images. Instead of poring through hundreds of images, now you can simply click "Find similar images" to narrow down the results to the results to the type you want. (We're rolling this out gradually, so the links in the below examples may not work for you yet.)

You could narrow down your results to show you only the Great Sphinx of Giza:

Or illustrative maps of Ancient Egypt:

Or ancient Egyptian-style drawings:

While we'll continue to use Google Labs as a way to showcase and collect feedback for exciting new technologies, we also want to make it easier for you to provide direct feedback on all aspects of Google Images. That's why today we're also announcing the availability of Product Ideas for Google Images. With product ideas, you can post comments that will be seen directly by members of the Images team, as well as vote on ideas that others have submitted. We'll pay special attention to those ideas that are voted to the top of the list.

Posted by Erik Murphy-Chutorian and Chuck Rosenberg, Software Engineers

Introducing the Google Earth heroes project

2009-10-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of millions of people use Google Earth every day to discover, explore and learn more about the world around them. We're especially proud that Google Earth has also been used as a tool to help people change the world. Today, to celebrate he individuals and organizations that have used Google Earth in their efforts to effect change, we announced the Google Earth heroes project.

In this first stage of the heroes project, we're highlighting the work of five groups — Project Kaisei, Save the Elephants, Borneo Orangutan Survival, Chief Almir and the Surui and Appalachian Voices — who have used Google Earth in a variety of ways to tell their stories. We'll be releasing videos showcasing other organizations' work in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

To learn more about these groups and view their videos, read our post on the Google Lat Long blog or visit http://earth.google.com/changetheworld.

Posted by Krating Poonpol, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Tanya Keen, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Sesame Street comes to Google: Improving our education system at the Breakthrough Learning forum

2009-10-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

If you could reinvent the American education system, what would you do? It's a question we think about a lot here at Google. This week we're exploring possibilities with Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, a forum organized in cooperation with The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Common Sense Media, with the support of the MacArthur Foundation. This event will bring together 200 of the nation’s thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy and policy to design a strategy for scaling up effective models of teaching and learning for children, with an emphasis on technology. The forum will showcase new research, proven and promising education innovation models to challenge decision-makers to refresh and reboot American global leadership in education.

There's plenty of evidence that shows that the current educational system in the U.S. needs improvement. Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education produced "A Nation at Risk," a report which first highlighted that our country's system wasn't meeting the national need for a competitive workforce in the day's global economy. Since then, our education system has gone through great upheaval, from the state-level standards reforms in the 1990s to 2002's No Child Left Behind, which is similarly based on the belief that setting high standards measurable goals will improve individual outcomes in education. Though the intention of these reforms was to close the global achievement gap, they left many teachers and students feeling restricted to teaching and learning "to the test." And we're still seeing disheartening results; the U.S. is currently ranked 25th of OECD countries in math scores and 24th in science scores according to the PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World report. And according to McKinsey's Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools report, if the U.S. had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of higher-performing nations, our GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. That's 9 to 16 percent of GDP!

Fortunately, there are people today who are working to change these statistics. One is tonight's keynote speaker, Geoff Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone. The Harlem Children's Zone combines educational, social and medical services with the goal of reaching all of the children in Harlem. Another organization addressing the issue is the MacArthur Foundation, which has created the Digital Media and Learning Project to explore the effects of digital media on young people and its implications for the future of learning and education. And we can't forget Sesame Workshop, which this year celebrates 40 years of educating children with Muppets and media.

There's great hope for American education, as long as we can work toward innovative solutions that not only allow students distinct educational experiences tailored to their interests and abilities, but also drive toward a common goal of assessable success. Students today are technologists too, and embracing that familiarity and bringing it into the classroom will help teachers and students better engage and work together to teach and learn. Most importantly, we need to support our teachers, principals and administrators — the true agents of change who tirelessly and passionately work to connect with each and every student that passes through their classrooms. The Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age forum is one step we're taking to address some of our most pressing national education system issues.

If you're interested in joining us at the forum, we'll be broadcasting live on the web both today and tomorrow. We welcome your questions and ideas to help us shape our discussions. Go to http://www.google.com/events/digitalage/ to participate and learn more.

Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing, Google Apps Education

Use Google Voice with your existing number

2009-10-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

Up until now, if you wanted to use Google Voice, you needed to choose a new number (a "Google number"). Taking calls through your Google number allows us to offer features like call recording, call screening and getting text messages via email. But we know not everyone wants to switch to a new phone number, so it made sense for us to create a lighter version of Google Voice for people who are willing to trade some features for the ability to use their existing numbers.

We're excited to announce that you now have the choice to get Google Voice with your existing mobile number OR with a Google number.

If you sign up using your existing number, you'll still get many of Google Voice's features. Most notably, you'll get all the functionality of Google voicemail, as explained in this video:

If you already have a Google Voice account, you can add Google voicemail to any mobile phone you've linked to your account. If you're not yet using Google Voice, you can request an invite or ask a friend with a Google Voice account to send you an invitation. When you receive the invitation to sign up, you can choose to use Google Voice with your existing number — or to get a Google number for additional features.

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications. We hope this new option makes it easier for you to manage your messages and personalize your voicemail experience.

Posted by Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet & Pierre Lebeau, Product Managers

Energy Secretary Chu visits Googleplex

2009-10-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu joined us at the Google campus today to talk about how the U.S. can build a prosperous economy powered by clean energy.

During a fireside chat with Googlers and our CEO Eric Schmidt, Secretary Chu talked about what it will take to create a clean energy revolution. When it comes to clean tech investments, he said, the Department of Energy is trying to "hit home runs, not base hits." He noted that there are many proposed solutions to climate change out there, and we need to pursue all of them. "The scale of what we need to do is enormous," said Secretary Chu, and "putting the world on a carbon diet" and dramatically bringing down the cost of clean energy and should be top priorities. If we succeed, it will "drive a new industrial revolution."

You can watch the full video of his talk here:

Secretary Chu also heard from Googlers about some of our own clean energy projects including Google PowerMeter, which gives consumers access to their energy use information, developing renewable energy that is cheaper than coal (RE<C) and making our datacenters the most energy efficient in the world. "More companies need to get on board and make this part of their business plan," said the Secretary.

While in Mountain View, Secretary Chu announced $151 million in funding for 37 breakthrough energy projects in technologies like renewable power, energy efficiency and electric cars. The funding is being made available through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a newly-launched organization within the Department of Energy (DOE) created to support high-risk, high-reward research into innovative energy technologies. ARPA-E is modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency that funded research that eventually led to the creation of the Internet.

Update on 10/29: Updated to include the full video of Secretary Chu's talk.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel