Today, Google Enterprise announced a new offering designed to aid Apps customers in managing information and preserving important data. “Vault” is aimed at easing document and email management as it relates to corporate litigation, regulatory investigation and compliance actions.
Businesses of all sizes need to be prepared for the unexpected. In today’s environment, using Vault to manage, archive and preserve your data can help protect your business. Litigation costs can really take a toll on a business when minor lawsuits can run up to many thousands of dollars, and larger lawsuits can cost even more. Significant litigation costs come from having to search and find relevant data, which is also known as electronic discovery (eDiscovery).
The tool costs $5/user/year and will knock down some walls of companies who would not have been able to get Google Apps if it were not for this tool. Expand Expanding Close
Google just launched a new feature called “Account Activity” that sends account-holders monthly encrypted reports about their signed-in frittering across the Web and Google services.
Once a user opts-in to the feature, Google will confirm and then send the first monthly report (see image below). The full-report gives Account information, such as locations, browsers, and platforms employed while Internet surfing.
The report also gives Gmail specifics, like most contacted addresses and to-and-fro message counts, and it breaks-down other Google services’ particulars, including Web history with users’ top searches, types, and queries, and a personal YouTube report on uploaded video activity and viewers’ location data. Users can also delete old reports or browse previous months as they begin to pile up.
Google added its Google Play service to the black navigation bar found at the top of its search engine.
The “Play” link seems to only appear for users logged into their Google account. Moreover, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company is likely rolling out the addition, because some users claim they are unable to see the new icon in the Google bar.
It is worth noting the link still does not appear on Google’s main search page—despite being signed-in.
UPDATE: The “Play” link now appears on Google’s main search page whether or not a user is signed-in.
Google is reinventing its Web-search technique with direct information for queries to better maintain the majority market share.
The Wall Street Journalsaid Google aims to replace some Web links with summarized answers and facts. The search formula transition will roll out over the next few months as the search engine begins to merge relevant results with semantic search, which attempts to understand the meaning of words versus keyword identification. One source said the change could influence 10 percent to 20 percent of all search queries.
Under the new strategy, a search for “Mount Everest” will display key attributes, such as the mountain’s location, altitude, or geographical history, aggregated from Google-indexed websites. Longer queries might uncover a real answer instead of links to websites. For example, the question “What are the 10 largest mountains in the United States?” would subsequently reveal a list of mountains and not ambiguous links to various state parks or hikers’ fan pages.
Google’s top executive Amit Singhal told WSJ that the new search results are the product of hundreds of millions of “entities” stored in a database. The company’s Metaweb team of 50 engineers painstakingly gathered particulars on people, places, and things over the last two years to build an immense collection for associating different words through semantic search.
According to a report from Bloomberg (via AllThingsD), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission subpoenaed Apple as part of its antitrust investigation of Google. There are not many details currently, but the report claimed the FTC is interested in Apple’s agreement with the company to use Google as its primary default search engine on iOS devices.
The agency’s request for documents includes the agreements that made Google the preferred search engine on Apple’s mobile devices, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly and declined to be identified. Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) have criticized these agreements as anticompetitive.
Microsoft is slinging mud at Google recently with bitter videos and critical advertisements, but the Internet giant is staying silent and has only thrown one thing at the Windows company: The “Google Search” app.
“Find better results using Google from your Windows Phone. Search the web faster and easier with the latest features: Google Autocomplete, My Location, and Voice Search,” announced the app’s description.
Baidu is China’s largest search engine with a not-so secret mission to dominate the global market, and while most chuckle at the thought of it surpassing Google, one might be surprised to learn the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant lost 7 percent of its search market share to Baidu last month.
According to the well-regarded statistics firm NetMarketShare, Google dropped 7 percent in Desktop Top Search Engine Share Trend in February while Baidu gained a little over 6 percent. Bing, Yahoo, and other competitors remained stagnant. As seen in the chart below the break, Google and Baidu have paralleled each other in terms of share fluctuations since November 2011.
Beijing-headquartered Baidu offers a range of Web services similar to Google, including maps, news, search ranking, e-commerce, Internet TV, a browser, and a smartphone operating system based on Android OS. The firm is adamant about its business not being a Google-clone, though.
Baidu’s Director of International Communications Kaiser Kuo explained to CNN (in the 2010 video above) that CEO Robin Li actually filed a hyperlink analysis patent before Google’s cofounder Larry Page. The filing indicates Baidu envisioned the future of search long before Google dominated cyber space…
. It is hard to imagine why GOOG is down when news this exciting hits
Google began rolling out the red link redesign today to the Google Finance websites. It has not hit ours, but reader @tuanye is feeling it. The new design has made it most of the way across Google’s network.
Google improved its search engine once again by aggregating health-related web content to the top of its main page when users search for symptoms.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company took to the Official Inside Search Google Blogtoday to announce how often people search for health information, as well as what the search engine is doing to make the process easier for Googlers.
“Every day, people search on Google for health information. Many of these searches relate to symptoms they or their loved ones may be experiencing,” wrote Chief Health Strategist Roni Zeiger, MD. “Our data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition.”
Americans were busy consuming record amounts of chicken wings and dip during yesterday’s big game, but they were also mobile web browsing more than ever before.
According to an official Google blog post, United States viewers used their tablets and smartphones to Google the Giants and Patriots, halftime acts and the best Super Bowl advertisements.
“In fact, around 41 percent of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that were made during the game came from mobile devices, up from 25 percent for the same time the day prior,” wrote software engineer Jeffrey Oldham.
The Super Bowl XLVI streamed live for the first time this year, and a soaring spike in related searches came with the flagship circumstance. Predominate searches initially came from desktop devices, but mobile devices leaped forward as the four-hour game launched into full swing.
Read below for more details on Google and the Super Bowl.
Google is adamant on accelerating work on its Google+ social network. By doing so, the company has already stepped on people’s toes. An upcoming Q&A feature from Google does not seem to be aimed squarely at Quora, a popular question-and-answer website, but the Quora people understandably cann0t be too happy about this development. See, according toVentureBeat, the search company is trying out a new capability called “Ask on Google+” allowing you to ask friends about the topics you are searching for. It is akin to Facebook Questions, with one huge advantage: One accesses it easily at the bottom of one’s search results:
Click the link to ask your friends any question related to restaurants, movies, how to make friends on Google+, or other topics. Your question will automatically be posted to your Google+ stream for your friends to answer.
Granted, it is nowhere near as complete as Quora and it lacks the basic component, a Q&A engine. In its current implementation, asking stuff on Google+ from your search results simply puts up an overlay window with a pre-populated Google+ post related to your search query. For example, if I were searching for “2012 Android smartphones,” clicking the “Ask on Google+” link would create the “Hi there! I have a question about 2012 Android smartphones…” message. You can edit the message, select your audience, or add a location, photo, video or URL. The folks with whom you shared the message will not be able to select from custom choices like with Facebook Answers. Still, it certainly does not mean crowd-sourcing answers from your Google+ friends will not take some allure off Quora and similar services— quite the contrary.
Google announced last night that it would be discontinuing a number of its services in the coming months because they “replicate other features, haven’t achieved the promise we had hoped for or can’t be properly integrated into the overall Google experience.”
Two things jump out at me regarding these closures:
Google is channeling its lab-like smaller products into features of Google Plus. It almost feels like if it isn’t Android or Search (both recently got heavy + integration), it will soon be part of Google Plus.
Larry Page is heeding the advice he got from Steve Jobs: “Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map,” read the biography of Jobs’ interaction with Page. Later, Jobs came to Page with a sharped-tongue warning that Google was making products, “That are adequate but not great. They’re turning you into Microsoft.” Page is now striving for greatness by putting “more wood behind fewer arrows”
Most notably for consumers, Picnik, the Cloud photo editing software, will be discontinued in April.
Picnik: We acquired this online photo editor in 2010. We’re retiring the service on April 19, 2012 so the Picnik team can continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products. You can download a zip file of your creations through Picnik Takeout or copy them to Google+. As of now, the premium service is free to everyone. Premium members will receive a full refund in the coming weeks.
We will likely see Picnik’s features reincarnated in Google Plus —where Google wants users to be storing photos anyway. Google did the same thing to Picasa late last year.
Google also announced that it will close Urchin Web Analytics, the company it bought in 2005 to make Google Analytics cloud service. Google kept the offline product available, but it will discontinue updates and sales, then subsequently direct customers to the Google product.
Urchin: helps businesses of all sizes measure their websites and online marketing. We’re fully committed to building an industry-leading online analytics product, so we’re saying goodbye to the client-hosted version, known as Urchin Software. New Urchin Software licenses will no longer be available after March 2012.
Google’s Skymap App project, which was started by some Pittsburgh Googlers in their 20 percent time, will now be Open Sourced and run out of nearby Carnegie Mellon.
A number of other services were also slated for termination…
Google just revamped the look of Latitude, its location-aware service akin to Foursquare. According to a post by Google’s community manager for Google Maps, Danial Mabasa, the new Google Latitude interface can be now accessed on desktop browsers at www.google.com/latitude. As you can see from the above screenshot, it is not much different from Google+. However, upon remembering how the old website looked, it is definitely a major makeover that helps achieve consistent user experience across Google’s key properties.
You can now easily access your friends’ list in the left-hand column or click the wrench icon to customize your personal location history and location settings. Whenever you want to manually update your location, just hit the Update button next to your name and approve your browser’s location sharing prompt. Another cool feature lets you playback your location history (should you choose to preserve it) from a select range of dates by pressing the Play button on the bottom left-hand corner of the map.
Launching on the Google+ Games platform, Google is showing off a new game involving its Google Maps product. The game, as you can see demonstrated in the video above, involves rolling a blue ball around a map. The game is set to launch sometime in February.
Google searches for “browser” no longer reveal the Google Chrome homepage, because the globally popular search engine decided to apply a penalty against the browser’s website after coming under fire for its sponsored post campaign.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company actively fights paid links and junk content under its Webmaster guidelines. However, earlier this week, SEO Book’s Aaron Wall noticed a Google search for “This post is sponsored by Google” displays over 400 websites written by Google marketing campaigns.
Bloggers were found posting low-quality content related to Google Chrome to promote Google content, and at least one of the posts had a hyperlink to the Chrome download page. Hyperlinks can help a website rise in Google search results through Google’s PageRank algorithm.
According to The New York Times, Google penalized JC Penney, Forbes and Overstock last year due to paid links and similar guidline violation issues. Search Engine Landsuggested that Google should penalize its own Google Chrome download page to be fair.
Caption contests are everyone’s favorite, even if they’ve been overused, and Google has decided to do one of its own. As you’d expect from the world’s search monster, it challenges you to describe a bunch of illustrations that depict people using Google search.
Available at the Inside Search site, the contest invites you to:
Come up with your most creative caption illustrating what these characters are searching for on Google. You can also vote for your favorites and share them with friends!
The company teamed up with artists Matthew Diffee, Emily Flake, Christoph Niemann, Danny Shanahan and Jim Woodring to come up with a bunch of funny cartoons that all share a a common twist – characters running Google searches. Upon submitting your caption, it should appear on the site. You can then share it using a unique link or vote on other submissions. It’s a nice little time-killer, go ahead and give it a try.
Are you dreaming of a white Christmas online? Don’t worry, Google’s gone all out this year to make winter festivities memorable for both its employees and users. As we reported this morning, Google staffers, also known as Googlers, were treated with a free Galaxy Nexus smartphone sporting a customized back cover depicting Android and Google Plus icons.
Then, in another display of holiday spirit, the company brought in much ice and snow and sprayed it in front of building B44, also known as the Android building, at their Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
The company’s social biz head Vic Gundotra posted the above image on his Google Plus profile with the caption: “Who says it never snows in Mountain View, California?”
The time-lapse clip below that shows the event was posted by Jason Chen, a technical program manager with Google. The search company did not forget about its users, surprising and delighting them with a few big improvements to Google Plus ahead of New Year. Google also let folks call Santa right from Gmail to leave him a Holiday message (Google Voice number 855-34-SANTA).
Lastly, Google tweaked its search engine with a snowflake animation. Go to Google.com and search for ‘let it snow’. This search term should produce snowflakes that will fill the page and eventually whiten out thesearch results. You can even click the left mouse button and drag the pointer around for fog removal. On an unrelated Holiday note, Google also revamped their Doodle website with the Google Plus design language.
In July Google launched an experimental Hotel Finder tool, which allows users to search specifically for the most relevant hotel related results. The service allows users to find places to stay in select areas, get price comparisons in one convenient location, and compile a shortlist of potential destinations. According to Search Engine Land, Google is now testing rather large “Comparison ads” at the top of hotel related search results that display links to the Hotel Finder tool. The move apparently has the hotel industry concerned… Expand Expanding Close
Have you ever been curious to find out who spends the most money advertising on Google Search? AdAgehas put together a list of Google’s top ad-spot buyers. If you’re a frequent Google Search-er you’re probably familiar with a lot of them, and probably have clicked on their ads before.
The media company IAC has earned the top-spot, spending $174,000 from January 2011 – September 2011. IAC owns popular online media properties like Match.com, Dictionary.com, Excite, and more. Amazon holds the second spot, with $118,000 spent within the same time period. It’s worth noting, pointed out by AdAge, that the fourth quarter is typically the most busiest time for advertising. These numbers will be much higher for 2011 as a whole.
Search still proves to be Google’s number one source of income. You might be thinking Android would, with 500,000 activations a day, but you have to remember Google makes Android open-source for all to use. All Android does for Google is draw traffic to their web products, which in turn could drive revenue through ads — Search being an example. Curious to see who else made the list? Check it out after the break.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt is set to face the European competition commission this week to address potential antirust issues concerning their dominant position in the search business, according to a report fromThe Guardian. The meeting will be held by the commission’s antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia, following initial talks held in January stemming from complaints by several search companies including Microsoft’s own Ciao.
Almunia is expected to present Google with a 400-page “statement of objections” that documents the commission’s research regarding “allegations that Google Inc has abused a dominant position in online search, in violation of European Union rules”.
The antitrust investigation started as far back as November 30, 2010, after claims from several search related companies including 1PlusV, Euro-Cities, and German organizations representing publishers filed complaints. The complaints themselves range from Google displaying there own services in search results to unfairly using content from publishers.
If Google is found guilty of abusing its dominant position in the market they could face fines up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover in Europe, or be forced to make changes to the way it runs its search business in the region. While some reported that during initial negotiations in January Almunia told Schmidt he would have a chance to offer up a solution, Almunia had this to say late last week about the upcoming meeting: Expand Expanding Close
If you are looking for some good weekend Google listening, hit up some of the books below. Clicking the link at the right gets you a free Audiobook if you haven’t signed up yet. Our favs:
Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that the company is currently testing new a ‘sources’ display inside of Search. As you can see above, the sources section pulls in information, in this case about Rihanna, that has appeared on Wikipedia and various other sources. The section also pulls in song information, in Rihanna’s case.
In most instances while searching on Google you want to find definite information — fast. Google has implemented similar features inside of Search for weather, sports, math calculations, and more. Keep ’em coming!
It seems about every week that Google is testing out new features inside of Search. Today, Google Operating Systemdiscovered a small tweak inside of Search — that is pretty redundant. Google has put new specialized search options in a horizontal view under the search box. Previously it was a feature in the black bar and to the side.
As you can notice, quickly things are getting a bit redundant, but hey, that might be a good thing in this case. That’s three places you can now refine your search!
