About the Google Education Summit

Since the dot-com bust in 2000, many colleges and universities nationwide have seen a decline (oftentimes quite dramatic) in computer science program enrollments. Many factors have been cited as possible causes including economic troubles in the high-tech sector, job off-shoring, the perceived image of computer science, and the growing complexity of programming. Recently, there's been a more critical examination of this crisis in computing, and stakeholders have proposed many targeted programs and curriculum changes to help stem the tide of students choosing not to pursue computing as a discipline.

In this vein, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently launched the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program aimed at transforming undergraduate computing education. NSF has taken a multi-pronged approach, including what it describes as "community-building efforts that bring stakeholders together to discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent in transforming undergraduate computing education." (Read more...)

Wildfire relief donations

Nearly one million people have been displaced by the devastating wildfires in Southern California. The Red Cross and Salvation Army are actively helping the victims of this disaster. If you'd like to contribute to their efforts, you can make a donation via our "Support Wildfire Relief" page.

One year mark for Google Apps Education Edition

It's been one year since we unveiled Google Apps Education Edition and we've seen great progress in that time. Thousands of educational institutions on six continents now use Google Apps, and we have hundreds of thousands of active users. We want to thank our customers for providing feedback and having an open dialogue with us. Based on feedback from lots of folks, we have rolled in more than 40 product and feature updates in this first year, including:

• Increased inbox storage
  
• Mail migration and routing
  
• New Google Docs UI
  
• Shared documents and presentation features
  
• Customizable start pages
  
• Shared address book
  
• Web-based multi-user chat
  
• IMAP for Gmail (coming soon)

(Read more...)

API, gadgets, and tabs, oh my!

Today, we're pleased to let you know about two new updates from Google Finance. First, we're releasing a new Google Finance tab on iGoogle. This new tab is a dashboard of financial gadgets which enable you to add, customize and share your Google Finance experience. But here's what's extra cool about these gadgets -- they now have communication skills and can "talk" to each other. When you make an update in one gadget, it automatically syncs with the other gadgets in the tab. (Read more...)

Google Tip of the Day gadget

One of the great things about working at Google is the breadth and depth of ideas that people come up with. Our development process is primarily bottom-up and driven by the enthusiasm of those same people, so these ideas are frequently translated into new products, services and features. A side effect is that these improvements are sometimes launched at such a pace that even Googlers have a hard time keeping up, and some of the best aspects can be lost in the shuffle. (Read more...)

Free IMAP for Gmail

Plenty of devices you use every day can take advantage of IMAP, a technology that lets you keep all your email in sync automatically as you read and sort it. Your smart phone most likely supports it, as does your PDA, laptop, desktop computer, etc. To learn more about IMAP, please have a look at the Gmail Blog, (Read more...)

Southern California fire maps

The devastating wildfires in Southern California have burned more than 373,000 acres of land; 350,000 homes have been evacuated. Lots of people have pulled together to make maps with information about the fires, including the burn zones, evacuation alerts, evacuation centers, safe areas, and closed roads. Here's a list of some of the most widely-used fire maps that our Google Maps team is aware of. We hope everyone is safe and that relief comes soon.

San Diego County Fires - KPBS is updating this map every 5 to 15 minutes with the latest information on the spread of the fire. It appears to be one of the most up-to-date and includes lots of information about evacuation alerts and evacuation centers. It also shows burn zones drawn on the map. (Read more...)

Spotlight on Seattle

Our Seattle/Kirkland engineering office just celebrated its third birthday! And like our friends in New York who recently commemorated an anniversary, we too had a very special cake to mark the occasion, as you can see here.

This is the home of many great products, including Google Talk, Google Pack, Sitemaps, Site Optimizer, and Google Toolbar for Firefox. If we do say so ourselves, we have also made major contributions to the core search engine, Google Maps, Google's advertising technology, Video Search and Video Ads. There's all kinds of work going on in Google Seattle/Kirkland, and we're always looking for great people to help us out. So to celebrate our birthday, we're excited to announce that we just opened a Fremont office (just north of downtown) as the latest addition to our family of Seattle-area locations. (Read more...)

Helping law enforcement to combat online child exploitation

To support law enforcement work in combating Internet-related crimes against children, last week we participated in the 6th Annual Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) National Conference in San Jose, California. Each year, the ICAC National Conference brings together hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement investigators, forensic experts and prosecutors to participate in workshops and lectures that provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to investigate and prosecute online crimes against children. (Read more...)

Helpful suggestions around the globe

In addition to constantly improving our search algorithms to provide the best answer to your queries, we also look for ways to help when you don't know what exactly to type into the search box to get to the perfect result. When you are looking for information on a specific topic, we offer query suggestions on the search results page that you can click on to find information faster. Sometimes, the suggestions enable you to quickly narrow down the search. Sometimes, we present interesting related concepts that encourage you to explore further. (Read more...)

Latest content ID tool for YouTube

A few months ago, we announced the initial development of a highly complicated technology platform -- content identification tools for YouTube. Today, we are pleased to launch, in beta form, YouTube Video Identification.

Video Identification is the next step in a long list of content policies and tools that we have provided copyright owners so that they can more easily identify their content and manage how it is made available on YouTube. (Read more...)

Today is Blog Action Day

Around Google we know firsthand the value that small changes, aggregated on a large scale, can bring to people everywhere. It's how our search engine and advertising system work: every click counts. Similar thinking — local action, global impact — is what made Cyan Ta'eed, her husband Collis Ta'eed, and Leo Babauta create Blog Action Day, a worldwide initiative to get blogs posting about a common cause: the environment. As Cyan has said of bloggers and readers around the world, "If they all make a very small change it could be very effective, and a small step but an important step" on the road to addressing climate change and other environmental challenges. (Read more...)

China in real time

Over the past few years, the Chinese stock markets have grown at a breathtaking pace. Not surprisingly, investors have demanded more access to data and information about Chinese stocks, particularly in real time. Google Finance has heard the clamor, and we're pleased to be able to improve our service for the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges by providing pricing data in real time. So if you're interested in Yunnan Copper, Bank of China, or you just want to search around, enjoy the additional data on Google Finance. (Read more...)

Our Corporate Equality effort

Googlers care deeply about creating a workplace that affords equal treatment for all our staff, and while we do it regardless of any accolades we think our efforts might bring, recognition from outside organizations does mean a lot to us. Which is why we're really pleased about our strong performance in the U.S. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Corporate Equality Index for the second year in a row. It's particularly exciting given that this is a time of rapid growth for our population of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees (whose group name is, naturally, Gayglers) around the world. (Read more...)

Two more reasons to type in Hindi

As some of you have already noticed, we've combined Google Suggest with our Indic transliteration technology to give you a new way to search the web in Hindi.

You can type your queries using a regular English keyboard, and we'll show you suggestions and completions of your query in phonetically equivalent Hindi. This means that you can type "amit" and see Hindi suggestions like "अमिताभ" and "अमिताभ बच्चन". Once you're happy with one of the suggestions, you can click it to get search results in Hindi. Try this out on the Google India Hindi homepage and explore all the Hindi content available on the web. (Read more...)

Google Search Appliance takes five

Around here, we love celebrating birthdays, including those of our products. And so it was just about five years ago that the idea for the Google Search Appliance was born. It was simple: make search inside of businesses as easy and effective as searching on Google.com.

The Google Search Appliance has matured quite a bit since then. We started with intranet web servers, added security and more than 220 different file types, and found hundreds of partners and thousands of customers. Now, we're embarking on a new phase: bringing universal search into the enterprise in order to break down the information silos that have developed around business networks and information. (Read more...)

Reach out and message someone

Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone. (Read more...)

AdSense goes straight to video -- units, that is

Nowadays, website publishers realize that getting people to visit your website is only half of the equation. Growing your audience is important, but keeping your audience engaged and staying on your site longer is just as important, if not more so. This is why we're excited to let you know about video units on Google AdSense. Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners. The video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content, as well as unobtrusive. AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue, so video units enable both groups to earn incremental revenue. (Read more...)

Let a thousand servers bloom

Just as people are social animals, computers are social machines—the more, the merrier. Twenty or thirty years ago, large, centralized mainframes sat alone in sheltered bunkers in computer science departments and government offices alike, choking for hours on mere megabytes of data. Even with recent advances in server technology, large, centralized machines are still struggling to cope with today’s modern computational challenges, which now involve terabytes of data and processing requirements well beyond a single CPU (or two, or four, or eight). One computer just won’t hack it; these days, to support a new paradigm of massively parallel systems architecture, we need to break the machine out of its bunker and give it some friends. (Read more...)

More types of gadgets for iGoogle

Google Desktop lets you not only search your computer easily, but you can also personalize your desktop. From cultivating a virtual potted plant, to reading the latest news and checking the weather forecast, you can customize your desktop with a variety of gadgets and a sidebar. Some of you have asked if you can also put gadgets on iGoogle homepages next to your other gadgets. And starting today, the answer is yes. (Read more...)

3 short weeks

Three weeks ago today was the official close of Google's acquisition of Postini -- and what a three weeks it's been. "Official close" meant that integration work could legally begin, and so the Google Apps team and Postini team have been burning the midnight oil to get our services integrated. Now, Google Apps customers, Postini customers and everyone else can see the results.

Postini security and compliance capabilities are officially part of Google Apps Premier Edition. Google Apps customers get these services for free. Postini customers get an extended trial period for Apps. New customers can choose their entry point: Apps (including Postini security and compliance) or any of the standalone Postini services. (Read more...)

Got a blog? Help a student.

When it comes to philanthropy, everyone’s got something different to give – some people have money, others have time, and bloggers have devoted readers. The creative folks at DonorsChoose have a few ideas about how bloggers can help students and teachers.

In case you’re not familiar with DonorsChoose, it’s a site where teachers post needs they have for their classrooms, and donors fund those projects directly. If you’ve got a blog, a website, or even an email account, you can help by creating what’s called a challenge. Just pick some of your favorite projects and challenge your family, friends, and readers to fund them. If you’ve got a Blogger account, it’s easy to add your challenge to your blog in just a few clicks. (Read more...)

International Cleanup Weekend: Think globally, clean locally

On October 13th and 14th, Googlers and many people around the world will head out to clean up local parks, beaches, trails and other places close to home. We'll be planning our cleanups using Google Maps and sharing our plans with friends and families, along with an invitation to help. So far, Googlers have sent in almost 100 cleanup maps and proposed plans, and have invited more than 900 of their personal contacts to help. (Read more...)

YouTube and Checkout for the non-profit world

Ever since YouTube first launched, people and organizations have been using it to broadcast their causes and engage supporters around the issues they care about. In that spirit, today YouTube unveiled its Non-Profit Program at the Clinton Global Initiative to help non-profit organizations more easily connect with the world's largest online video community. In the past few years, online video has emerged as a key tool for grassroots organizing on the Internet -- a short, simple video can demonstrate the impact and the needs of an organization in a uniquely compelling fashion. This program will enable non-profits to create dedicated YouTube channels for themselves, making it even easier for people to find, watch, and engage with the organization's video content. The initial participants are 13 organizations including the American Cancer Society, Friends of the Earth, and YouthNoise. (Read more...)