Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps.

As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.)

We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens' new idea into a project, which we codenamed "Walkabout." We started with a set of tough questions:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms? 

After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we're very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we're giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.


Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

As with Android, Google Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we're inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

• The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave). 
• Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
• The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave. 

So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this?

If you're a developer and you'd like to roll up your sleeves and start working on Google Wave with us, you can read more on the Google Wave Developer blog about the Google Wave APIs, and check out the Google Code blog to learn more about the Google Wave Federation Protocol. 

If you'd like to be notified when we launch Google Wave as a public product, you can sign up at http://wave.google.com/. We don't have a specific timeframe for public release, but we're planning to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview. We're excited to see what feedback we get from our early tinkerers, and we'll undoubtedly make lots of changes to the Google Wave product, platform, and protocol as we go.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Update @ 7:07PM: The video of the Google Wave keynote presentation is now available:

Posted by Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager

Read more > Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Search engineer stories

I came to Google because I wanted to work on hard problems and have a big impact on the world. Four years later, I'm still constantly awed by how challenging search is. We work on improving the entire search process, including formulating queries, evaluating results, reading and understanding information, and digging deeper with this new information. Every day we work on ways, both big and small, for search to be better, faster, and more effortless.

My fellow engineers and I wanted to give a peek into some of the challenges we face and how we're trying to make search even better. We created a series of short videos so you could hear straight from the engineers. Here's mine, where I talk about a change to spell suggestions.



Some of the videos may talk about things you are already familiar with and some may be new. Either way, we hope that you enjoy hearing these stories, and do stay tuned for more!

Posted by Patrick Riley, Software Engineer

Read more > Search engineer stories

Kicking off 2nd annual Google I/O developer gathering

Today is the first day of Google I/O — two days of developer talks, fireside chats and demos, all focused on the latest innovations in the web as a development platform. We're excited to have this chance to welcome more than 3,000 developers to the Moscone Center in (unusually) sunny San Francisco for a variety of interactive roundtables and talks on subjects like Android, Google Maps and Google Apps for the Enterprise.


We'll be back with more news as the conference progresses. In the meantime, you can follow updates on the @googleio Twitter stream; videos of all sessions will be available on code.google.com shortly after they conclude.

Update @ 3:20PM: Videos from Day 1 of Google I/O are now available on our YouTube playlist.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog team

Read more > Kicking off 2nd annual Google I/O developer gathering

New logo look

You may have noticed new logos at the top of some of Google's web pages, including Google Labs, Google Moderator, and Google Code. These are the result of a new logo design we are rolling out. We hope this design freshens up our look as well as improves consistency and ease of use across our sites. Now, our product names will appear in clean, simple blue lowercase type alongside the Google logo as shown here:

Since the logos appear in many different locations and sizes on our websites, our new designs are standardized to be the same size and color wherever they appear. This should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go. They are also consistent across all our international domains, which is especially helpful for people using right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

We are happy with this change since it will help us streamline our user experience. Count on seeing the new logos rolling out to Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and more over the next few weeks.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Jamie Divine, Senior Visual Designer

Read more > New logo look

Netlog integrates with Google Friend Connect

When we started building Friend Connect, we wanted to provide a fully open system — one that lets you join any website and interact with the people there in a meaningful way, regardless of where they come from. To enable this kind of engagement, we used open standards like OpenID, OAuth, and OpenSocial as underlying technologies, enabling any other service to plug into Friend Connect.

Today, we're excited to share that Netlog has used these open standards to integrate their social networking service with Google Friend Connect. Now, Netlog's more than 45 million users across Europe can:

• Sign into any of the millions of sites and blogs using Friend Connect with their Netlog credentials
• Use their Netlog profiles on these sites
• See if any of their friends are already members of the same sites and invite other Netlog friends to join
• Share their Friend Connect activities with their friends on Netlog, and
• Send messages back to their Netlog friends

Additionally, for sites that are already using Friend Connect, one of the benefits of this standards based model is that they can take advantage of any new service that chooses to join this open ecosystem, like Netlog, without any additional work. The new network option simply appears.

Any social network or service, whether they are large or small, regional or global, niche or general audience, is welcome to take advantage of these open standards to integrate with Friend Connect, and participate in an open social web.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager

Read more > Netlog integrates with Google Friend Connect

Put the pedal to the metal with a faster Google Chrome

We introduced Google Chrome back in September, and it's received a great response so far. Since launching, we've been working hard on adding the top requested features and making Google Chrome even faster.

Today, we are updating to a new version of Google Chrome that is faster than ever. JavaScript-heavy web pages will now run about 30% faster. See the chart below or compare scores yourself.

Additionally, we've added some useful features like form autofill, full screen mode, and the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Here's a short video demonstrating some of this new functionality:



If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated with these new features soon. If you haven't downloaded Google Chrome, get the latest version at google.com/chrome.

To read more about this update, visit the Google Chrome blog.

Posted by Darin Fisher, Google Chrome Team

Read more > Put the pedal to the metal with a faster Google Chrome

Faster is better on Google Suggest

As we prepared to write this post, we discovered a common childhood passion for fast things: high-speed trains, roller coasters, firetrucks, and more. That may be a key part of why we're so excited to be working on Google Suggest, since it saves time by giving suggestions as we're typing our searches.

Today, we're introducing more features to Google Suggest to help you make your searches even faster. These features are rolling out gradually, so you should be able to see them soon.

Suggestions on the results page
Previously, we only showed suggestions based on your original search input. Now, when you make a search from a results page, we provide suggestions that relate to the current results page. As you can see in the example below, if your previous search was for roller coasters, when you begin a new query the first few suggestions are still related to roller coasters — helping you refine your search queries to quickly find what you want.


Personalized suggestions
Trying to remember that query which gave you the best results? You're not alone! We estimate that about a quarter of all signed-in searches are repeats from the past month. Now, if you're signed in with your Google account and have Web History enabled, we may show some of your relevant past searches as you type. Personalized suggestions will make it easier and faster for you to repeat searches that have worked before. Or, if you need to step away in the middle of a search task, this will help you continue your search tasks at a later time.

You can remove a personalized suggestion that you do not like by clicking "Remove", which will remove the search from your Web History. You can also remove searches from your Web History directly, manage Query Suggestions on the preferences page, or sign out of your Google account entirely to stop seeing personalized suggestions.

Navigational suggestions
If your first keystrokes indicate that you may be looking to navigate directly to a specific site, we'll list it and send you straight there if you click on it.

Sponsored links in suggestions
Similar to the navigational suggestions above, sometimes we detect that the most relevant completion for what you're typing is an ad. When an ad is shown, we mark it with the text "Sponsored Link" and a colored background, as on the results page.

We are also introducing a couple more changes to Suggest: we will no longer show the result count for items in the suggest box (we've gotten feedback that the numbers were not helpful in comparing the relevance of the queries) and we now bold the text of suggestions to help you more quickly scan the list. To learn more about Google Suggest, check out the help center.

We hope these new features save you time, so that you can get back to roller coasters, high-speed web surfing, action movies and each other that much faster.

Posted by Jonathan Effrat, David Kadouch and Matt Kulick, Product Managers

Read more > Faster is better on Google Suggest

Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

1. Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country?

2. Name this eastern European capital city, where a flight from the southeast would approach the city by flying over the Rhodope Mountains.

3. Name this city in Oceania, the largest on South Island, where a flight from the west would approach the city by flying over the Southern Alps.

If you're stumped, you're not alone! For 55 fourth- to eighth-graders, though, these sorts of questions represented the culmination of months of hard work studying maps and absorbing geographic knowledge.

Earlier today I had the honor of speaking at the championship round of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee — moderated by Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek for the 21st year. This year, Google Earth is sponsoring the Bee in support of its mission to raise awareness and support of geography education. Held at National Geographic’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and broadcast on public television stations across the country, the competition inspires and challenges students to better understand the world around them. 

Eric Yang, who didn't miss a single question in the finals, won on the third question of a tiebreaker round by answering the first question above. Eric, a 7th grader from Texas, has already scored 2200 on his SATs!

It wasn't just the students who came away from the day re-energized and excited about geography. I was also lucky enough to meet a number of passionate educators like Rebecca Montgomery, a teacher from Mississippi, who administered the state bee there this year and told me that "the bee had a tremendous impact on our schools this year and I know now what we need to do to get kids ready to learn geography."

Here at Google, we're always excited to see how innovative teachers are using tools like Google Earth and Maps to engage students by putting the world's geographic information at their fingertips. I'm particularly happy to have been part of the Bee today because geography and mapping were such a big part of what led me to help create Google Earth. I'm not the only Googler who fell in love with maps at an early age, though. Check out this video to see how some of my fellow mapmakers started down the path that eventually brought them to their current profession:



We'll be watching to see what lies ahead for today's passionate young geo whizzes. Congrats again to all the Bee competitors, and happy exploring!

Answers: 1. ɐıuɐɯoɹ 2. ɐıɟos 3. ɥɔɹnɥɔʇsıɹɥɔ 

Posted by Brian McClendon, Director of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps

Read more > Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

Announcing the 2009 Doodle 4 Google Winner

Nearly six million online votes helped us pick the winners of this year's Doodle 4 Google competition from a very creative pool of doodles. Today, we're pleased to announce the results.

Congratulations to Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."


Christin will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop, and a $25,000 technology grant for her school. Her doodle will be featured on the Google.com homepage tomorrow for millions of people around the world to see.

Our congratulations also go out to the three national finalists. They were selected as having the best doodle in their grade groups and will each receive a laptop computer:

Grades K-3
Miriam Elizabeth Lowery ~ Grade K, Austin Peay Elementary
Covington, TN
"Friendship Around the World"

Grades 7-9
Blakely Linz ~ Grade 7, Indian Hill Middle School,
Cincinnati, OH
"Stop to Smell the Flowers"

Grades 10-12
Emerald Lu ~ Grade 10, Covington Latin School
Covington, KY
"From the Ashes"

Our four winners were announced at a special event today at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where we also unveiled an exhibit of the top doodles that will be on view until July 5, 2009. The finalists were treated to a day in New York City that included activities which promote peace, sustainability and wellness — all inspired by this year's theme, "What I Wish for the World." And of course, Dennis Hwang and our doodle team led a doodling class for all top regional finalists in New York city.

We have one more winner to announce: Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the recipient of the District Quality Participation Prize. They will receive a $10,000 technology grant for having the greatest quality participation.

Thanks to all those who voted and helped us find this year's winners. And thank you to all the creative kids out there who submitted entries. We hope you'll doodle with us next year!

Update @ 10:45 AM: We've posted all of the state finalists — several hundred doodles in all —on the Doodle 4 Google website and we encourage you to take a look at the beautiful artwork created by these very talented young artists.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster Manager

Read more > Announcing the 2009 Doodle 4 Google Winner