Google Operating System

No New Mail? Try Google+

2012-02-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

What's the message displayed by Gmail when there's no message in your inbox? If you answered "No new mail! Want to read updates from your favorite sites? Try Google Reader", you are right. It was Google's subtle way to promote Google Reader.

Before Google Reader was released, Gmail's "inbox zero" message used to be: "No new mail! There's always Google News if you're looking for something to read."

Now that Google focuses on developing Google+, a modern version of Google Reader, Gmail's new message is: "No new mail! See what people are talking about on Google+." The links sends Gmail users to the "what's hot" section of Google+ which "highlights selected content thought to be exemplary, interesting, and appropriate: showing you serendipitous and diverse information".

From Google News to Google Reader and now Google+, Gmail illustrates three different ways to read news. Google News ranks and clusters articles from the web, Google Reader allows you to read news from your favorite sites, while Google+ lets you read the articles shared by the people you follow. From news that are important to everyone to news that are important to the people you trust.

Chrome for Android

2012-02-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

Many people wondered why Android's built-in browser is not called Chrome. One of the reasons is that Android's browser doesn't have many of the features of the desktop browser: data sync (bookmark sync is available in Android 4.0), extensions, themes, apps. Another reason is that Android's browser is updated less frequently than the Chrome browser because it's included in the operating system. Most OEMs ship their own browsers, so not many people use the stock Android browsers.

Now Chrome is available for Android 4.0 and it won't replace the standard browser on your device. "Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices," explains Google.

Chrome for Android brings a new gesture for navigating to the next tab (flick instead of Ctrl+Tab), support for page prerendering (used by Google Search to fetch the top result), incognito mode, link preview and data sync for bookmarks, typed URLs and browser sessions. That means you can open a few tabs in the desktop Chrome, close your computer and continue reading the same pages on your Android phone or tablet. In addition to these features, Chrome for Android "brings support for many of the latest HTML5 features to the Android platform: hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, strong HTML5 video support, and new capabilities such as Indexed DB, WebWorkers and Web Sockets". There's also support for remote debugging.

"Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web," mentions Google.

At the moment, Chrome for Android doesn't sandbox tabs and there's no support for Safe Browsing, but these features could be added in the feature.

You can only try Chrome for Android if your phone runs Android 4.0 (you're using Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, Transformer Prime or a different device with a custom ROM). Another limitation is that Chrome for Android is only available if you're in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, but I'm sure you can use Market Enabler or the .apk linked here to bypass this restriction.

Google's Experimental Interface for Related Image Searches

2012-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

Google's image search engine tests a new interface for related searches. Instead of only displaying a list of queries, Google also shows small thumbnails. Mouse over a query and you'll see 3 image results in a preview box.

{ Thanks, Pontus. }

Google Tests a New Version of the Black Bar

2012-02-04T15:23:00.000-08:00

While Google hasn't abandoned the navigation bar launched last year, both the old and the new interface are used today. If you load google.com in Chrome's incognito mode, the old interface shows up more often than the new UI. The simplified interface made navigation more complicated, even if it looks better than the black bar.

Google even tests a slightly updated version of the old bar that uses the services from the new UI, more spacing and a different color scheme.

Here's how you can try the latest Google experiment. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open google.com in a new tab, load:

* Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J)
* Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K)
* Safari's Web Inspector (how to do that?)
or
* IE's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab)

and paste the following code:

document.cookie="PREF=ID=381502750b6e9119:U=aaee74aefea7315a:FF=0:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1328391998:LM=1328392000:S=yPtlCgLbEnezu5b4; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();

Then press Enter and close the console. If you're not in the US and you're using a different Google domain, replace ".google.com" with your domain in the code (for example: ".google.co.uk" in the UK).

If you'd like to go back to the old interface and reset the Google PREF cookie, repeat the same steps, but use the following code:

document.cookie="PREF=; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();

Google Instant, Disabled For Slow Computers

2012-02-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Google Instant is supposed to make searching faster, but you need a pretty good Internet connection, a modern browser and a decent computer. Google Instant is not available if you use IE6 or other outdated browsers and it's automatically disabled if you have a slow Internet connection.

Now Google also disables Instant if you have a slow computer. "If Instant gets automatically disabled, we continue to check your computer speed and will re-enable Instant if your performance improves," informs Google. If you don't like this change, you can disable it from the search preferences page. Just select "always show Instant results" in the "Google Instant predictions" section.

I've tested this feature on an old laptop and Google's implementation isn't great. Google Instant continues to be enabled for the initial query even if it's slow, then it's suddenly disabled when you visit Google Search again. Google doesn't show a message next to the search box to explain why Instant is disabled and not many people will visit the search preferences page, which both an explanation and a fix.

This is just one of the 17 updates from last month that improved Google Search.

Google Groups Themes

2012-02-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

Just in case you don't like the Google Groups interface and want to customize it, there's a new light gray theme you can try. Just click the settings button, click "Themes" and select the "soft gray" theme. This only works in the new Google Groups interface.

A similar theme is also available for Gmail and it will be interesting to see if Google Groups will add support for the other Gmail themes. Maybe apps like Google+, Google Docs, Google Reader and even services like Google Search will support Gmail's color themes.

{ Thanks , Herin. }

Android Market's Malware Scanner

2012-02-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Google doesn't like to manually review user-generated content. It's not efficient and algorithms can do a better job. Imagine how many people would need to be hired to watch all the videos submitted to YouTube (60 hours of videos uploaded every minute).

In some ways, uploading an application to the Android Market is just like uploading a video to YouTube. Sure, you need to pay a fee, but you don't have to wait until a Google employee checks the application. Unfortunately, this also means that the application can include malware, deceive users, crash or spam your contacts. Google usually reviewed the app only after enough users reported that the app is malicious.

Now there's a new service called Bouncer "which provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process. The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts. Here's how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior".

That seems like a great idea: Google actually tests the apps without having to wait until other users install them and notice there's something wrong. The bad news is that this service was tested last year and was used to find potentially-malicious apps. Despite that, the apps infected by DroidDream were found by a security vendor and not by Google.

"The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise," says Google. Another explanation could be that Google's service is not good enough.

Google also says that Android "makes malware less potent" because it uses sandboxing, it displays the list of permissions and Android Market can remotely remove malware. I don't think that most of the users read the list of permissions. They simply ignore them, click "OK" and install the application. Maybe it would be a better idea to require users to explicitly enable sensitive permissions when they're using the apps.

While security vendors try to scare Android users and push their products, Google should focus on removing spam and malware from the Android Market and make it a safer place. Improving Android's security model and finding ways to install security updates faster are also important.

Google Docs Will Improve Paragraph Styles and Add More Fonts

2012-02-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

An upcoming Google Docs update will bring a better interface for selecting paragraph styles and new features that lets you customize styles.

Google Docs will also add some new open source fonts from the Web Fonts project: Amaranth, Arvo, Dancing Script, Lobster, Merriweather, Open Sans, Philosopher, Quattrocento.

Google has recently updated the Android app for Google Docs and added offline support, while also improving the reading layout for tablets.

Update (February 6): Custom styles are now available.

{ Thanks, J. }

Gmail's Shortcut for Inserting Hyperlinks

2012-01-31T15:55:00.000-08:00

Less than 2% of the Gmail users have enabled keyboard shortcuts and actually use them, but that doesn't mean Google shouldn't improve them. Many people complained that Gmail's rich text editor doesn't have a shortcut for inserting hyperlinks and now it's available: Ctrl+K (or Cmd-K if you use a Mac).

The same shortcut is also used in Outlook, Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other apps. "Just select any text, and then press the Ctrl and K keys at the same time. A dialogue box opens where you can type a link," informs the Microsoft Word blog.

I wonder why Google doesn't offer the option to use the top search result for the text you've selected or at least pick one of the top results from the "edit link" box.

{ Thanks, Cougar. }

Country-Specific Blogger URLs

2012-01-31T07:52:00.000-08:00

Google found an interesting trick to defend Blogger blogs against local laws: redirect readers to country-specific domains and only remove those URLs if required.

"Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or 'ccTLD.' For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader's current location," explains Google.

"Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country's law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD." That means [blogname].blogspot.com will continue to exist, but it's not clear if the users from that specific country will still be able to access it.

Blogger will start to use country-specific domains, just like many other Google services. If you're in Australia and visit google.com, you'll be redirected to google.com.au, but you can opt-out by clicking "Go to Google.com" or visiting google.com/ncr. The same option is available for Blogger: "Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted NCR URL. NCR stands for 'No Country Redirect' and will always display [blogname].blogger.com in English, whether you're in India, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, or anywhere. For example: http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr – always goes to the U.S. English blog."

Google doesn't mention the list of countries that are affected by this change, but Techdows.com reports that India is one of them. Obviously, blog owners can use custom domains if they don't like the new feature. Even if Google made sure that the duplicate URLs are properly handled by search engines, it could be annoying to see so many URLs that send people to the same page.

{ Thanks, Venkat and Herin. }

Google+ and the Post-Web Google

2012-01-27T16:21:00.000-08:00

I've noticed an increasing number of ads that no longer send people to the company's sites. Instead, the ads only include a link to the official Facebook page. Sites suddenly look outdated, no longer include the latest information and people stop visiting them.

There are still people that visit those outdated sites and many are coming from search engines like Google. Despite Google's efforts to have a comprehensive index, there's a growing subset of the Web it can't properly index and that's Facebook. Sure, Google indexes a lot of Facebook pages, but that's like trying to find your keys in a dark room. Google needs Facebook's map to index all the pages and find the connections between pages and between users, but Facebook is not willing to license this valuable data to the most important competitor. Google tried to make the web social and failed, so now the only option to stay relevant is to build an alternative to Facebook's walled garden and that's Google+.

+1s are the new links, authors have profiles, companies have social pages and this new universe will try to coexist with the old Web in Google's search results. Google tried to focus on the users and find ways to make the social Web more open, but now it has to focus on itself and do everything it can to stay alive and maybe even save the Web. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," but that's impossible if it can't access, understand and rank that information.

Back in 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin used links to determine the importance of a Web page. Now links and pages are no longer that important and the old rule of trying to send people to other sites as quickly as possible is difficult to apply. Showing personalized results requires understanding users better, encouraging them to share more content and create connections. In many ways, Google+ is the anti-Google and that's why it's difficult to understand some of the new features.

Google+ Now Open for Teens

2012-01-26T15:32:00.000-08:00

Google+ changed the age requirements so that any Google Account user can join Google+. In most countries you need to be at least 13 years old to create a Google Account and join Google+, but there are 3 exceptions: Spain, South Korea and Netherlands. Until now, Google+ required to be at least 18 years old to "upgrade" your account.

Google's VP Bradley Horowitz mentioned that there are a few tweaks and new default settings for teens. By default, only the people from teens' circles can trigger notifications and comment on their public posts. If someone outside a teen's circles joins a hangout, Google+ temporarily removes the teen from the hangout and gives him a chance to rejoin.

Teens and young adults are the most active Internet users on the planet. And surprise, surprise: they're also human beings who enjoy spending time with friends and family. Put these two things together and it's clear that teens will increasingly connect online. Unfortunately, online sharing is still second-rate for this age group.

In life, for instance, teens can share the right things with just the right people (like classmates, parents or close ties). Over time, the nuance and richness of selective sharing even promotes authenticity and accountability. Sadly, today's most popular online tools are rigid and brittle by comparison, so teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called "friends."

With Google+, we want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we're doing both, for everyone who's old enough for a Google Account.

It's interesting that the updated form for creating a Google Account doesn't automatically create a profile and doesn't add the user to Google+ if he's not at least 18 years old.

{ Thanks, Oskar. }

Two Ways to Export Your Google Docs

2012-01-25T07:58:00.000-08:00

Google Takeout supports a new service: Google Docs. Now you can use the same interface to batch export your documents.

I tried both Google Takeout and the built-in feature from Google Docs that lets you download your documents. Even if they have the same purpose, they're quite different. The Google Docs feature is more flexible: you can choose to download only spreadsheets or presentations and skip all the other documents. You can also skip the files uploaded to Google Docs and not converted to a Google Docs format (for example: PDF files, archives and video files). Google Takeout has a "configure" feature, but you can't skip one or more document types. Another subtle difference is that Google Takeout lets you export only the files that you own, while Google Docs exports all the files from your account.

How to export all your files from Google Docs? Just go to the Google Docs homepage, select one or more documents, click "More" and then "Download", click the "All items" tab, pick your favorite formats and click "Download". The process is not that intuitive and you shouldn't have to select a file to see the download option.

{ via Data Liberation Blog }

The Self-Serving Google+ Results

2012-01-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

Google has been often accused of promoting its own services in Google Search. Whether it was Google News, Image Search, Product Search or Video Search, the specialized search engine showed results from all over the web and not just from Google's own services. Image Search wasn't restricted to Picasa Web Albums, Video Search wasn't restricted to YouTube, Blog Search wasn't restricted to Blogger. Even for services like Google Dictionary and Google Finance that have their OneBox at the top of the Google search results, Google shows a list of other relevant services.

Google's special section that shows people and pages from Google+ doesn't look like a regular Google OneBox. It's placed in the right sidebar, where Google used to display ads. It shows up for general queries like [music], [sports], [math], that aren't typically associated with social search results. It only shows results from Google+, not from other social services like Twitter or Facebook. It's there even if you're not logged in using your Google account or you're not using Google+.

If Google+ wasn't a Google product, would it make sense to show a similar OneBox with profiles from social sites? Normally, Google would have created a profile search engine and showed a group of relevant results somewhere in the list of search results. Like this:

Google already indexes profiles from different sites and even shows special snippets with structured data. Why not create a special search engine for profiles like the one that lets you search recipes or the search engine for applications?

When Google released Knol, many people wondered if Google could boost the rankings for Knol articles or create a special OneBox with Knol results. "Google Knol does not receive any sort of boost or advantage in Google's rankings," replied Matt Cutts and he was right. Now what if Google displayed a Knol OneBox at the top of the search results for queries that returned relevant Knol articles? Maybe Knol would've become more popular and it wouldn't have been discontinued.

Is it fair to promote results from a single service, especially when you own that service? Even if those results are comprehensive, relevant and useful, it's always a good idea to also show results from other services.

Some engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace developed a site called Focus on the User that lets you replace the Google+ results with other social profiles from the web. From:

... to:

The results are better simply because you can check the accounts from other social services. Maybe an artist shares more information on Twitter or maybe the Facebook account is more important. "When you search for 'cooking' today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result. That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie's Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was last updated nearly two months ago," noticed the authors of the Focus on the User site. I still don't think that the social search box should be placed next to the results, but at least the tweak made it more useful.

"Focus on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line." (Google's philosophy)

{ via waxy.org. Thanks, Michel. }

The Story Behind Gmail's Logo

2012-01-24T12:15:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wondered who designed Gmail's logo, Kevin Fox has the answer:

Dennis Hwang designed the Gmail logo. At the time, Dennis designed virtually all of the Google doodles and he did a lot of the new logo work as well.

The logo was designed literally the night before the product launched. We were up very late and Sergey and I went down to his cube to watch him make it.

The initial version used the same font as the Google logo (Catull), but Catull has a very awkward 'a', so Dennis decided to use Catull for the 'G' to tie the brand to Google, then cast the others in a cleaner sans-serif (Myriad Pro, if I recall correctly).

Another ex-Googler, Douglas Edwards, confirms the story in his book "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59":

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

Belgian Fries in Google Street View

2012-01-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

Nikolaas, a reader of this blog, noticed that Pegman - the Google Street View icon - looks different for Belgium. When you try to move the icon, you'll notice that Pegman got some French fries.

"Occasionally Pegman dresses up for special events and occasions, or is even joined by peg friends in Google Maps. Some of these icons stay in Google Maps for specific locations, such as the skiing Pegman at Whistler Blackcomb Mountain and the penguin for Street View imagery of Half Moon Island, Antarctica," explains Google.

Street View was launched two months ago in Belgium, but it's not clear why Pegman looks different. Maybe because French fries originate from Belgium.

{ Thanks, Nikolaas. }

Google Search, Punctuation Marks and Other Symbols

2012-01-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Google usually ignores punctuation and mathematical symbols from a query because it doesn't index them. They rarely change the meaning of a query and Google's index would have to grow a lot bigger, without improving the results too much. Some punctuation marks and mathematical symbols are used to provide advanced features (for example: colon, quotes, minus sign, plus sign).

I've recently noticed that Google started to show results for queries like [.], [,], [:], [;], [#], [%], [@], [^], [)], [~], [|], ["], [<], [$]. When you search for [%], Google shows the results for [percent sign] and that happens irrespective of the interface language, so it's not a synonym generated by Google's algorithms.

Search for [:] and you'll get the results for [colon]. Most results are about the colon from the human anatomy and they're not relevant.

A New iGoogle Interface

2012-01-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

Google tests a new interface for iGoogle, the personalized homepage that lets you add gadgets and themes. The updated interface uses the design patterns that should be familiar by now from other Google services. Tabs are now available in a dropdown that's displayed below the search box, while the left sidebar is only used for the chat widget. There are two buttons for adding gadgets and changing the theme next to the options menu.

{ Thanks, Brinke. }

Picnik and Other Discontinued Google Services

2012-01-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

If you thought that Google will no longer close other projects this year, you were wrong. Picnik, one of the best online photo editing service, will no longer be available starting from April 20. Until then, you can use all the features from the paid version of Picnik for free. Google will focus on adding more Picnik features to Google+ and that's the reason why Picnik is discontinued.

Social Graph API, a great way to find public profiles and connections between people, will no longer be available. The service was used by Google to find your social connections and show social search results. Unfortunately, "the API isn't experiencing the kind of adoption we'd like, and is being deprecated as of today. It will be fully retired on April 20, 2012."

Google will also discontinue Urchin (the installable version of Google Analytics), Google Message Continuity (an enterprise service that allowed Microsoft Exchange customers to back up emails to Google's servers), Needlebase (a data management platform acquired from ITA Software) and Sky Map (an Android app developed "to show off the amazing capabilities of the sensors in the first-generation Android phones and offer a window into the sky"). Sky Map was open sourced and will be developed by Carnegie Mellon University students.

Google promises to take "a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be properly integrated into the overall Google experience," so I'm sure we'll see other discontinued projects. From Orkut to Google Talk (the Windows software), from Patent Search to Google Bookmarks and Translator Toolkit, from iGoogle to Picasa, there are many projects that might be discontinued. Moving from standalone applications to platforms, Google gets rid of many tools that solved only one problem and tries to convince users to join all-encompassing services like Google+ or Google Apps.

If Google Results Aren't Helpful, Ask on Google+

2012-01-20T12:14:00.001-08:00

Sometimes Google's results aren't that useful and they don't answer your question. Maybe the query is imprecise or obscure, the results are outdated or you don't have the patience to check the first 100 results to find something helpful. Asking your Twitter followers or your Facebook friends could be a great idea. Google doesn't integrate with Twitter or Facebook, but it experiments with a new feature that shows a message below the list of results: "Want to ask your friends about [your query]? Ask on Google+".

Clicking the link opens a Google+ box that already includes a message: "Hi there! I have a question about [my query]..." Edit your message, click "Ask" and the first results could show up in a few seconds in Google's notification widget.

Maybe Google+ also will include a revamped version of Aardvark and you'll be able to send your question to the right people.