As we mark the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Games, I can’t help but remember eight years ago, when I competed on the U.S. cycling team. Even though I didn’t walk away with any medals then, training and competing involved a herculean effort - but that pales in comparison to what we’re unveiling today.

I’m happy to present the 2008 Summer Games on Google, a site that features a number of our products to help you stay updated on Summer Games happenings. And it's available in 66 countries and 31 languages, from Australia to Uruguay, and from Arabic to Vietnamese.

We collaborated with a data provider to make it easy for you to keep current on event schedules and get updates on results, as well as track medal counts with an iGoogle gadget. You can also get schedules and results on Google search results. (Check out the results for water polo.) We're also including the newest Summer Games highlights through Google News. The Summer Games Google Maps lets you view medal and event information based on your favorite regions and sports, and there's a 3D video of the various Games venues you can tour:



Also, be sure to check out this cool collection of 3D stadiums and venues in Beijing created with Google SketchUp. Read more about these efforts on the Lat Long Blog. Since we know many of you are on the go this summer, all this information is available for mobile devices, where Google Mobile is available.

We hope these tools make it easy and enjoyable for you to follow all the action at the Summer Games.

Posted by Dylan Casey, Product Manager

Have you ever been stumped in finding the right words to search for? Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldn't remember any of the artist names or song titles. So I started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that I did remember -- and like magic, I saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that I wanted! (I was opted-in to the keyword suggestions Google Labs experiment at the time). At that moment, I was so proud to be working on Google Suggest, a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.

Today we're excited because Google Suggest will be "graduating" from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we'll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box.

We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently. Below are some great ways Google Suggest can help simplify your searching.

• Help formulate queries: Instead of just typing [hotels in washington] - did you want [hotels in washington dc] or [hotels in washington state]? Don't remember that song title or person's name? Let Google help you search (and yes, I ended up choosing "From This Moment" as our wedding song).

• Reduce spelling errors: Since suggestions are spell-corrected using the same "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, misspellings and typos can be corrected ahead of time. Instead of wasting your time with a misspelled query like [new yrok times] or [tomorow never dies], search the first time with the correctly-spelled query.

• Saves keystrokes: Who wants to spend their time typing [san francisco chronicle] when you can just type in "san f..." and choose the suggestion right away?

The Google Suggest feature originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com. Special thanks to my teammates Miki Herscovici (Tech Lead) and the rest of the engineering team in Haifa for their hard work in making this happen.

So what are you waiting for? Give it a try. Start typing in a query on Google.com to see Google Suggest in action!

Update: Corrected team mention.

Posted by Jennifer Liu, Product Manager

Cross-posted from the Google LatLong Blog.

The recent conflict in Georgia has raised some questions about how Google Maps has handled mapping in that part of the world. The most obvious question is, why doesn't Google Maps show any cities or roads for Georgia, or its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan? The answer is we never launched coverage in those countries because we simply weren't satisfied with the map data we had available. We're constantly searching for the best map data we can find, and sometimes will delay launching coverage in a country if we think we can get more comprehensive data. Some of our customers have asked if we removed map data from any of these countries in response to the recent hostilities in that region and I can assure you that is not the case. Data for these countries were never on Google Maps in the first place.

But this has generated a lot of feedback that we are listening to and learning from. We're hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic coverage of a country than see nothing at all. That certainly makes sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of countries that are still blank on Google Maps. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as other significant regions of the world will benefit from this effort.

In the meantime, much of this data, including cities in Georgia and other surrounding countries, can be found in Google Earth.

Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager

Louisiana is a place with heart and soul, a place where culture lives in the streets, in the rhythm of our music and in the flavors of our unique cuisine. I recently had the opportunity to visit the Googleplex and I expressed my interest in seeing Street View come to Louisiana, so I'm excited to see the launch of Street View imagery for Greater New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport. This remarkable tool allows us to share with the world life as we see it, here on the ground in my home state.

In this time of recovery and rebuilding, it is important that we share real images of life in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast. As you explore the streets of New Orleans, you will discover a city marked by extremes. You will see some areas spared the worst of Katrina’s fury which have quickly recovered, and you will find other neighborhoods that remain flattened by the floodwaters that broke the levees. You will see that our residents call both FEMA trailers and antebellum mansions home.

What you might not see is the incredible spirit of those who have given themselves to this city. Those who were lost in the storm, and those who survived and have returned. The thousands who are still searching for a place to call home. The more than one million volunteers who have come from across the nation and the world to give their time, their sweat, and their hearts to rebuilding a great American city.

But rebuilding gives us another opportunity – one unprecedented in our lifetimes. Because we are starting from scratch in many cases, we can build back better than before. We can create new solutions to persistent social problems – solutions that can be put to the test in New Orleans. Whether we’re talking about designing new levees to hold back flood waters, schools to prepare our kids for a 21st century economy, or a justice system to keep our citizens safe, Louisiana is addressing all of these issues and more. We can find the answers for our nation’s ills on the streets of this city.

Street View for New Orleans will help you get to know the city, its streets and its neighborhoods in a way never before possible. And when you are ready to discover more, I invite you to come see and experience the streets, the soul and the spirit of New Orleans for yourself.

Posted by Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu, State of Louisiana

The global nature of our mission is reflected in the phrases the "world's information" and "universally accessible." To this end, you may have recently read about our 40-language initiative and the story of a community coming together to develop Google search in the Maori language.

Following on this theme, we'd like to highlight a few new products that enable a better online experience for Tamil speakers around the world.

First, we just released Google News in Tamil. Like other Google News editions, we gather stories from the various Tamil news sources on the web and present an automatically- generated summary with links to the most important stories in each section.

We recognize that it can sometimes be hard to enter Tamil text with existing keyboards. Our transliteration technology enables the conversion from English text to phonetically equivalent text in Indian languages. For example, using transliteration, you could type "vanakkam" and we would convert it to Tamil script as வணக்கம். We have embedded this technology in several Google products to make it easier to enter text in Tamil.

Google search in Tamil enables users to start typing in English and automatically get query suggestions in Tamil. If you wanted to enter the query "ponniyin selvan" in Tamil, just start typing it in English - e.g. "ponni" and we will show the Tamil suggestions:


Tamil transliteration in Blogger is designed for bloggers publishing content in Tamil when using the English keyboard for text entry. It's our hope that this will make Tamil content more popular and more easily available online.

Tamil transliteration in orkut makes it easier to communicate with friends and family by exchanging scraps in Tamil.

We hope that each of these products will help to bring the benefits of the Internet to the millions of Tamil speakers in India and elsewhere.

Posted by Vinodh Kumar R and Naren Manappa, Software Engineers

We'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index, but expect the update will be completed soon.

Please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board to share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users.

Sharad Verma
Yahoo! Search

The Google Apps Security & Compliance team, which provides email and web security for more than 40,000 companies, regularly tracks trends in spam, viruses, and other threats, and we almost always find something interesting. Check out some of our latest findings -- including details on some specific attacks that you should keep an eye out for -- on the Enterprise blog.

And if you're interested in learning more about what you can do to keep your business safe from web and email threats, be sure to tune into our webinar on Friday, August 15, at 10:00 am PT.

Posted by Amanda Kleha, Google Apps Security & Compliance team

Back in February we told you about the 2008 Model Your Campus Competition, a call for students to submit 3D models of their college campuses created with Google SketchUp. We got submissions from campuses around the world, and Mexico stood out with submissions from 13 different campuses. At that time we also ran a parallel contest with a top Mexican school, ITESM (The Technology Institute of Monterrey), and offered a separate prize for the best models submitted by ITESM students. The students come from all over Mexico, so there is a truly national mix of competitors. In total, ITESM participants designed 111 buildings, representing 22 ITESM campuses. All of the submissions will live in a collection within the Google 3D Warehouse, an online storage space for all your 3D needs. From intergalactic space vehicles to cucumbers, the 3D Warehouse is flush with downloadable models made by the SketchUp community.

Last week we announced the winners of the contest: David Gómez-Urquiza Madero y Ricardo Pfeiffer Hurtado, both students of Mechatronics at ITESM's Santa Fe Campus. Since a digital Earth needs some digital buildings, we're thrilled that ITESM students have submitted their designs to create a more livable Google Earth-the winning models will be included in the 3D Buildings Layers of Google Earth. The school leadership plan on encouraging students to construct detailed 3D models of all 33 ITESM campuses, and the contest will return for another run next year. Here's to the winners!

Posted by Ana Paula Blanco, Head of Mexico Communications and Public Affairs

The Yahoo! Mobile team has continued to develop new enhancements to make Yahoo! oneSearch easier and more effective for our users on the go. Today, we're further enhancing the mobile search experience by rolling out a Yahoo! oneSearch shortcut for Nokia devices. This new shortcut provides users with one-click access to Yahoo! oneSearch through our downloadable client. Once installed, it only takes one click on your phone screen to initiate a search. Simply click on the pencil key or right shortcut key on your device, and you no longer have to hunt through your cell phone menu to conduct a search.

If you have a select Series 60 Nokia device (e.g. N70, N95, N73, 6120, and E65), give it a try. The Yahoo! oneSearch shortcut is currently available for you in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and South America. If you don't have a Series 60 Nokia, we're hoping to bring the oneSearch shortcut to you soon.

One of the key features of the Yahoo! oneSearch shortcut is the integration of Search Assist, which made its mobile debut in April at CTIA. Mobile Search Assist is powerful on the go when you're having to type on small keyboards or "triple tap" phone buttons; it reduces the time it takes to enter a search term through real time search suggestions and related concepts for more refined results. For example, as you type in 'Dark Knight', Search Assist may recommend suggestions such as Darth Vader or Olympian Dara Torres to help guide your search.

For more information, visit http://mobile.yahoo.com on your PC, or http://m.yahoo.com on your mobile device. And let us know what you think in the comments below.

Joy Ghanekar
Yahoo! Mobile

In my previous post, I described the components of your web search experience and the principles behind creating a great search experience. There are complex algorithms underlying simple features such as spelling correction and the two line snippets that describe each search result. We figure out what works by running experiments - tiny tests for a small number of users which help us determine whether that feature helps or hurts.

Experimentation is a very powerful tool, and we use it very widely to test potential changes to search. At any given time, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world. I'll start by describing experimental changes so small that you can barely tell the difference after staring at the page, and end with a couple of much more visually obvious experiments that we have run. There are a lot of people dedicated to detecting everything Google changes - and occasionally, things imagined that we did not do! - and they do latch on to a lot of our more prominent experiments. But the experiments with smaller changes are almost never noticed.

For example, can you tell the difference between the two pages below?

Choice 1:

Choice 2:

I'm pretty sure I would not be able to tell the difference if I were to see each of them on their own. But apparently you can! At least in the aggregate, there is a measurable difference with a change like this. In case you can't tell after staring, the white space around the first search result has changed, which makes the first result in Picture 2 slightly more visually prominent. This visual prominence conveys the fact that according to our ranking signals, the first result is a substantially better match than the next result. On the plus side, it helps you focus on the first result. But if you were looking for one of the other results, it can disrupt your scanning of the page. An experiment helps us determine which effect is more prominent, and whether a change would help you search faster.

Another change, almost as minimal visually, is between these two results: