Pug-speak

Posted by Nickey, Canine Division

Unlike some others, I may be a small dog, but size is just a state of mind: My Google job is as important as anyone else's. After my morning nap at the office, I go out on hall monitor duty. This involves watching everyone who walks by our cube and getting some nice massages from passers-by. Some of the Googlers even know my language. For example, Jonathan Rosenberg is fluent in Pug, and loves to converse with me whenever we run into each other. And I get to play with plenty of dogs here: labs, doxies, tollers, and even some fellow pugs. Then there are occasional runs to the nearby Shoreline Dog Park.
Between the two, Google is my favorite place to be. Just as Google engineers get 20% of their time for their own projects, I have mine: at least a day a week I'm the resident court jester. It's not very hard to entertain Googlers -- everyone seems to get a kick out of me. If I had a nickel for every time someone laughed or smiled at me, I'd be running the company. And then I'd put bins of biscuits in each Google mini-kitchen.

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Writely so

Posted by Jen Mazzon, Google Writely Team

For the last five months, I've been part of a Silicon Valley startup called Upstartle, which makes Writely, a collaborative word processor that runs in a web browser. Well, as of Monday, I'm happy to say that I, and the rest of the Writely team, are now part of Google.

The other night, I was talking to my husband about how nervous I was to be starting work there. Truth be told, we've all been pretty overwhelmed for the past few weeks. What could our little team possibly do that's innovative enough? And he said, "Hello? You already did it!" It's true -- everyone told us it was crazy to try and give people a way to access their documents from anywhere -- not to mention share documents instantly, or collaborate online within their browsers. But that's exactly what we did. And since we launched the Writely beta in August 2005, many thousands of people have registered, and all of them came through word of mouth (and blog).

To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. If you're interested in giving us a try, we hope you'll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you'll be able to try out Writely.

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Update: Lane’s Gifts v. Google

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

You may remember that last February, Google was sued in Arkansas over what is commonly called click fraud. We’re very near a resolution in that case, so we thought we’d offer an update.

We’ve been discussing the case with the plaintiffs for some time and have recently come to an agreement with them which we believe is a good outcome for everyone involved. As a result, Google and the plaintiffs are going to ask the judge to approve the settlement, which would resolve the case.

Until the settlement is approved by the judge, it is not final. And the details are confidential, but will become public when it is formally filed for the judge’s consideration. However, we can share the major pieces of our proposed agreement.

Google currently allows advertisers to apply for reimbursement for clicks they believe are invalid. They can do this for clicks that happen during the 60 days prior to notifying Google. Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred. For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.

This agreement covers all advertisers who claim to have been charged but not reimbursed for invalid clicks dating from 2002 when we launched our “cost per click” advertising program through the date the settlement is approved by the judge.

For the finance folks out there wondering how we’ll account for this, we can say that the attorneys’ fees (which will be determined by the judge) will be charged as an expense, most likely in the first quarter, once the amount is determined. The credits will be recorded as a reduction to revenue in periods in which they are redeemed.

We have said for some time that we believe we manage the problem of invalid clicks very well. We have a large team of expert engineers and analysts devoted to it. By far, most invalid clicks are caught by our automatic filters and discarded *before* they reach an advertiser’s bill. And for the clicks that are not caught in advance, advertisers can notify Google and ask for reimbursement. We investigate those clicks, and if we determine they were invalid, we reimburse advertisers for them. We will continue to do that, and believe that this settlement is further proof of our willingness to work together with advertisers to reimburse invalid clicks.

You can find more information on invalid clicks and how we manage them here or here.

Update: Added second link to more information.

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A real find

Posted by Ben Bunnell, Google Book Search team

As a librarian and a Googler, I love the "Find it in a library" links we've added to many -- but not yet all -- of the titles in Google Book Search. While we work on getting these links rolled out for the rest of the books, at least one user has taken matters into his own hands: "Superpatron" Edward Vielmetti has written a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that enables him to see which books are available at his local library.

Since Google Book Search is all about helping you discover and locate books you never knew existed, it's especially gratifying to see people like Ed embracing and extending this mission.

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Google News Israel

Posted by Marisa Bauer, Google News team

We're launching Google News in Hebrew! Google News Israel aggregates articles across Hebrew-language newspapers and presents them side by side so you can read what all of them are saying in one view. It's been fun and challenging to create this edition, having to accommodate text that reads right to left, and adjusting our algorithms to work with a whole new set of papers. It's also a pleasure to be launching Google News for a whole new audience, and we look forward to bringing it to even more people around the world. Meanwhile, with the recent opening of our Israeli office, we look forward to offering many more products to our friends there.

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Robots and writers and Googlers, oh my!

Posted by Jon Steinback, Product Marketing Manager, Google Video

One of the great things about working at Google is, well, not always working at Google. Is launch planning stressing you out? Are you obsessing about bugs? Can't find your favorite obscure beverage at the mini-kitchen? Every day, and usually more than once a day, the Googleplex offers talks that serve as excellent (and educational) distractions from the daily grind. These talks can help us learn more about the things we're doing, or help stoke our interest in something new.

Now, with Google Video, we finally have the opportunity to share many of these "from the Googleplex" presentations with the world. They include our Authors@Google talks (don't miss "How to survive a robot uprising" author Daniel Wilson) and the regular engEDU tech talks. Grab coffee and get comfy for this one on "Scalable Learning and Inference in Hierarchical Models of the Neocortex," for example.

Of course, you can access them all on your own schedule. And if you want to see them in person, feel free to check out our recruiting video.

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The littlest Mini

Posted by Kevin Gough, Enterprise Team

The Google Mini search appliance continues to proliferate for different customer segments. The newest and least expensive Mini is geared towards people who need to search up to 50,000 documents on their websites or corporate networks. Does that include you? Read more here.

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