Code Jamming in Dublin

Posted by Jeanne Williams and Anne Driscoll, Staffing Programs Team

On June 29th, Google Dublin hosted the onsite finals for Code Jam Europe 2006. This is the third of four code competitions slated for this year, with China in January, India in April and a Global Code Jam this fall.

After nearly 10,000 registrants and three intense online rounds, the top 50 finalists persevered and flew to Dublin for the final challenge. ACM members also joined the coding community fun, traveling from countries as far afield as Kazakhstan, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, Spain, France, Poland and Bulgaria to celebrate the success of the finalists. Several of the ACMers had qualified for the Code Jam Finals in their own right, and having them in Dublin added a real buzz to the proceedings.

Over 15 countries were represented in the finals, and 31 of the top 50 are from Eastern Europe. We celebrate the success of the top finishers: Tomasz Czajka from Poland took home the €2500 grand prize; second- and third-prize winners were Petr Mitricheve and Roman Elizarov, both from Russia, who won €1000 each.

Watch the fun that defined Code Jam Europe in this short clip from the 3-day event -- and keep on coding to prepare for the next one!

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Google Maps in Europe

Posted by Steven Crossan, Product Manager, Google Maps Europe

We're excited to announce that we have just launched beta versions of Google Maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These sites include the full suite of interactive street maps, driving directions, and integrated local business search. This has been a global effort with Google teams in Paris, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, New York, Mountain View, Kirkland, Sydney, London, Dublin, and Zurich working together for much of the past year to build a truly "local" product.

Accompanying this release, we have greatly improved high resolution imagery coverage for Europe in both Google Maps and Google Earth. Check out the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Olympiastadion in Berlin, and the Grand Canal in Venice.

To give you a preview of what's to come, we've also rendered street maps for many other countries in Europe. Developers, you can incorporate these maps and imagery into your own websites using the free Google Maps API Version 2.

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Day off for Dennis

Posted by Rupert van Millingen, Google UK

From time to time, we like to reflect the world we live in through the logo designs on our home page. These Google 'doodles' are designed exclusively by the original Doodler, Dennis Hwang. Here in the UK, we wanted to let Dennis have the day off and give someone local the chance to get their artwork in front of millions. After a successful pilot competition in 2005, we're pleased to tell you that our 2006 "Doodle 4 Google - My Britain" competition is now open and accepting doodles from pupils ages 4-18 in all schools across the UK.

A panel of experts will judge, narrowing the submissions down to a Top 30 and the public will vote for their favorites. The winning doodle will be hosted on the Google.co.uk home page for a day, and also bag the artist a trip for four to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. To get your (again, UK) school involved, please check out Doodle 4 Google - My Britain.

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Thanks Victoria doodlers!

Posted by Dennis Hwang, Webmaster and Google Doodler.

Last week Google opened our new office in the Victoria area of London, and to mark the occasion we invited students from nearby schools to create their own Google Doodles from our logo. My fellow judges and I were basically considering three qualities: the originality of the doodle idea or topic; integration of the design with the Google logo; and sheer creativity. We received hundreds of entries with all sorts of themes, ranging from serious topics like the Asian tsunami and the Battle of Trafalgar to an entire logo transformed into a bunch of eyes staring at each other. In the end, we chose these five finalists. And our winner, which graced our U.K. home page for a full day, was this charming doodle from 11-year-old Lisa Waiwaina:









In the end, I was simply blown away by the amazing quality of the work, especially from younger artists up to around age 11 (the bunnies drawn by 5-year-olds were simply awesome). It was a good reminder that staying in touch with one’s inner child can be a key to creativity. Now, back to my secret agenda of searching for a young apprentice...

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Get News in Portuguese

Posted by Bruno Fonseca, Software Engineer

We've just launched two different editions of Google News: one for Brazil and one for Portugal. Google News gathers stories from more than 200 news sources in Portuguese worldwide, and automatically arranges them to present the most relevant news first. We're very pleased to be able to help Brazilian and Portuguese readers stay informed about the issues that matter most to them. Read more (in Portuguese) about this launch.

For a group of Google Engineers, it's especially exciting, because in July, we opened an engineering office in Brazil. These Google News Portuguese editions are the first launches our team in Belo Horizonte has participated in. Here's to many more!

Of course, Google News Brazil and Google News Portugal are small steps towards our mission. You can help by sending your feedback, thoughts and ideas. Divirta-se!

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Mini goes Euro

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Mini Product Manager

Turns out that businesses in London, Madrid and Dusseldorf have the same headaches as those in Chicago or Vancouver: they can't find that sales presentation on the company intranet. Or customers fill up the support line with calls for info that's actually on the website. Google Mini to the rescue. So now it's for sale in the UK and throughout the EU.

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One more way to access Local UK

Posted by Abhijit Kalamkar, Software Engineer

We were on a roll after we launched Google Local UK last month, and went on to build a mobile web browser version of Google Local for our UK users. Users can now access Local on their mobile by going straight to the Local home page (that's http://mobile.google.co.uk/local) or the Google UK home page (a.k.a. http://www.google.co.uk/xhtml). So we say: step away from that computer. Click a few buttons on your keypad and head to that new Thai restaurant near Piccadilly Circus. If you're slightly disoriented once away from the screen, Local gives you Google Maps and driving directions too.

Updated with visible URLs.

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Google does Grimsby, Gateshead and Glasgow

Posted by Richard Boardman, Usability Analyst

Sometimes it's hard being a Brit in Silicon Valley. Have you tried to find a decent pint, authentic fish and chips or well-made bowler hats in northern California lately? (Okay, the last one isn't a priority.) There's also that feeling of being left out when new technology gets launched in the U.S. before it reaches the rest of the world.

Take Google Local and Google Maps, for example - innovative local business search and beautiful interactive maps. However, as per the barrage of emails I got from mates back home: New Orleans, Anchorage and Beverly Hills are all very well, but what about London, Cardiff, and Belfast?

I guess my colleagues got tired of my moaning, so I'm delighted to introduce Google Local UK and Google Maps UK. The Google UK office and a few of us homesick Brits in California have been helping out with the development.

Engineer: Why are the streets in the UK such a mess?

Me: Sadly, the ancient Britons, Romans and Vikings had a different idea of urban planning than do we moderns.

Product Manager: Manchester's not that important, is it?

Me: It is if you're a Mancunian! (So watch it, lad.)

Give it a go: your fish and chips in Plymouth, theatres near Piccadilly Circus, and haggis in Inverness await.

P.S. We Brits also love our text messaging, so all this info (and more) can be found on the go by texting your (UK) queries via Google SMS.

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A bun gartetg!

Posted by Sascha Brawer, Software Engineer, Zurich

Google is already available in 104 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu, but we had no Romansh. It's an old tongue that's still spoken in valleys in the Swiss Alps. Only about one percent of Swiss people can speak it, but even so it's one of the country's four official languages. Romansh is in the same family as Spanish or Italian, but looks more daunting because of the long sequences of consonants. For example, "image search" becomes "tschertga da maletgs."

So we threw a party in Zurich and asked people fluent in Romansh to translate text like "I'm feeling lucky." (They found this particularly hard to translate, and settled on "A bun gartetg," which is more or less "on good luck"). And now there is Google in Romansh. Why do we bother? Call us obsessive, but we like it when everyone can use Google in their native language.

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News happens everywhere

And so should news websites. So we've launched seven new editions of Google News; franchise operations, if you will, offering the usual wide (and occasionally startling) variety of stories which our computers think you'll be particularly interested in reading if you happen to live in, or otherwise care intensely about, Argentina, Chile, Canada Français, México, Österreich, Schweiz or Suisse. Vive la difference.

Michael Krantz
Google Blog Team

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Have a very Froogle Friday

Well, it's Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when every patriotic American must either watch football or go shopping. If neither end zone celebrations nor mall garage traffic jams make your day, why not try Froogle? In honor of the kick-off (so to speak) of the holiday spending-splurge season, we've spruced up our online shopping engine to make it as easy as possible for you to find and buy the products you and your loved ones really, really need.

For one thing, we're going international. A few weeks ago, we launched Froogle U.K.; this week we're pleased to announce that German-speaking shoppers can now search for and buy products that are actually for sale in Germany.

And back here in North America, we're now offering Froogle Store Ratings, which let you check the reputation of online stores by looking for "Reviews" links or aggregated ratings scores in your Froogle search results. We've also improved those results by grouping items together so you can more easily compare products. You can even narrow your search by searching by store. And finally, to ease those nightmares about receiving yet another itchy wool sweater, our new Froogle Wish List is easy to create (just click "My Shopping List" to get started), and even easier for your friends and family to access and (hopefully) heed.

Mick Jagger once insisted that you can't always get what you want. This holiday season, the Froogle team is doing their best to prove him wrong.

Karen Padham
Froogle product manager

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Froogle Britannia

Just in time to find a decent pair of wellies for the winter, we've launched Froogle UK. More Britons than ever are shopping online, so we wanted to offer the broadest possible shopping selection with merchants large and small who sell throughout the U.K. With unbiased price comparisons and free listings for all participating merchants, now Froogle can assist with retail therapy on both sides of the pond.

-- Karen Padham
Froogle Product Manager

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Dublin go bragh

A year ago, Dublin became the first location for Google's regional operations outside the U.S. We designed it to serve Google customers across multiple time zones and languages spanning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. There were just five of us in 2003. Today we've built a team of 150, and their passion, energy, and tech savvy enliven our new Barrow Street HQ. It's about as polyglot as we could hope for, too: this lot of Googlers come from 35 countries and speak 17 languages.



To mark the opening of the Dublin office, we were honored to have a visit by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined Mary Harney, An Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) to formally open the office. As Ms. Harney's appearance demonstrates, we've had incredible support from the Irish government.

We're in the heart of Dublin in a state of the art facility. If you're fluent in European languages, if you're motivated, focused and ready for a fast ride, come join us!

Angus Kelsall
Head of Dublin office

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Made in the shade

You've probably wondered why there's never been a Google domain in Norway. As it turns out, our name means "sunglasses" in Norwegian, and, well, even the non-lawyers can see where this sort of problem leads.

But now the Great Norwegian Sunglasses Crisis is history, and this week we were able to launch Norway and Kenya, our 102nd and 103rd domains, respectively. Check them all out-- and hey, anyone got an up-to-date atlas we can borrow?

-- Sean Knapp
Software engineer

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