April Fool's Day is pretty much like a national ... err, international holiday for everyone that works for Google. It seems that nobody else on the Web takes the tradition of pranks and jokes as seriously as Google does -- just see our coverage from the last few April Fool's Days for proof: Google's Gags Go Worldwide For April Fool's Day 2012 It's Over: Google Has Already Won April Fools Day 2011 Google Books, Google Maps Get 3D View – But Only For April Fool's Day April Fools' Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry It may still be March 31st for me, and maybe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: General | Google: Analytics | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gmail | Google: Internet Access | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Marketing | Google: Street View | Google: Trends | Google: Wallet | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News

Microsoft's "Scroogled" ad campaign, which attacked Google over paid inclusion in shopping and Gmail over privacy, is coming to an end. KQED reports that Microsoft will stop TV, newspaper and social media ads promoting the Scroogled message: "That part is about finished," Stefan Weitz, Microsoft senior director of online services, said on Thursday. Microsoft launched the Scroogled campaign last November to attack Google's all-paid-inclusion shopping search results. Our stories below cover more about this: Bing Attacks Google Shopping With “Scroogled” Campaign, Forgets It’s Guilt [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: General | Google: Gmail | Google: Product Search | Microsoft | Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: General | Microsoft: Marketing

In August, Google introduced a field test that brings Gmail content in your search results. So if you searched for [my flights] and you had a flight confirmation email in your Gmail account, Google would show you upcoming flights. This is still an opt in field test available to a limited number of US users but Google has announced they have expanded it to cover searches for purchases/orders, event registrations, and hotel reservations. Google said, "you can now search for [my purchases] to see a list of recent online purchases from select merchants and track the packages to see if they� [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Google: Gmail Search Field Trial | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Search Plus Your World | Google: Web Search | Top News

Here's another small step in Google's effort to centralize your Google search activity: The company is expanding a field trial to include Google Drive documents in search results. At the same time, the existing trial that includes Gmail information in search results is being expanded to work not only from Google.com, but also within Gmail itself. Users who opt-in to the trial will be shown a prompt from Gmail and/or Google Drive in the right column of Google's search results, as shown in this Google screenshot: For privacy reasons, the actual results don't show by default; the use [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gmail | Google: Gmail Search Field Trial | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Web Search | Top News

Google released a "field trial" today allowing people who enroll to do Google searches and get information from their Gmail messages mixed in with their web results. Don't worry. Only those enrolled see their own messages this way. Below, a look at how it works. If accepted into the program, after you do a search, you'll find matching messages appearing along the right-side of your screen: In the example above, I searched for the name of Barry Schwartz, the news editor here at Search Engine Land. As he's contacted me through Gmail, one of his messages gets highlighted. Notice, however [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Gmail | Google: Gmail Search Field Trial | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Search Plus Your World | Google: Web Search | Top News

Google announced in this morning's Google Search Breakfast that it is integrating Gmail emails directly into Google search results. This means you can search Google and find emails from your Gmail (not Google Apps) account directly in the search results. The Gmail results show on the top right section, collapsed neatly and ordered by relevance of your query. Google will also show relevant contacts and upcoming flights found in your email based on your search query. This is currently an experiment, which you can sign up over here. It is available for the first one million who sign up. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Google: Gmail Search Field Trial | Google: Web Search

It was right about this time last year when we gave Google the winner's trophy for a series of gags that put all others to shame. We could do the same again right now, because Google has tried to top itself with another round of April Fool's Day jokes that pretty well span the globe of Google's international properties. Below is a recap of Google's (and a few others) pranks, and we'll do our best to update this as the day goes along. Google Racing: Self-Driving Cars Hit NASCAR The main joke at the moment is Google's "announcement" of a partnership with NASCAR called Google Racing, which b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: AdWords | Google: Analytics | Google: Chrome | Google: General | Google: Gmail | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Other | Google: Parodies | Google: Street View | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

The Google News Blog announced that the Spotlight section on Google News may contain stories that your Google + friends and Gmail contacts have +1'ed. If you are logged in while using Google News and your friends or contacts have used the Google +1 button to like the stories in your Spotlight section, that information will show up in the Spotlight section near the article. It will even let you click on the name of your friend/contact to see their social profile on Google. Google said: Starting today, the Spotlight section will sometimes include articles that your Gmail contacts and peop [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: +1 | Google: Gmail | Google: Google+ | Google: News | Top News

Google, Microsoft and scores of other companies are pushing us all into the "cloud"—where all of our information is stored online and is instantly accessible from any internet-connected device. This instant, universal access is a phenomenal benefit for most people. And since many of these cloud-based services are "free" (in the sense that they are subsidized by advertising) and are reliable and mostly maintenance-free (automatic software upgrades) virtually all of us are inexorably living more of our online lives in the cloud. This also means we're increasingly trusting the companies tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Gmail | Legal: Security

China is being very defensive. Google's recent exposure of more attempted Gmail hacking, targeting US government officials and Chinese human-rights activists, has made the Chinese government embarrassed and angry. Suspected state-sponsored Gmail hacking is what initially caused Google to discontinue cooperating with China's internet censorship policies. Chinese: Google Is a "Political Tool" Last week's hacking incident  and Google's statements that indirectly point to the government as the source have the Chinese seeing red, so to speak. Claiming that China is being unfairly maligned, th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Gmail | Google: Outside US | Top News

Did you ever wonder what your favorite SEO's Twitter timeline looked like? Well, if you did, you can now peak in on someone else's timeline. For example, check out what Danny's timeline looks like by going over here. As you can see, Twitter added the ability to see what the 1,801 people on Twitter that Danny follows are "tweeting right now." Not only that, Twitter added a neat "Shuffle" feature to randomly jump to other Twitter user's timelines by clicking on the top right shuffle icon on that page: Meanwhile, Google announced the people widget for Gmail yesterday. That featu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Twitter

The signals used for Gmail's priority inbox will soon be employed to tailor advertising in the app to more match users' interests. The company says it will also be testing offers and coupons from local businesses in Gmail. The system will use Gmail user's habits -- whether they read messages quickly or mark them as unimportant, for example -- to determine whether the topics covered by the emails are of interest. For example, if a user opens every message related to cast-iron cookware, but sends to spam or deletes everything that references gardening supplies, they'll soon see more ads about [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: AdWords | Google: Gmail

Google Talk Guru is a new experiment that tries to turn the instant messaging interface into a search engine of sorts. It was just added to Google Labs today, and is very much a lab-level project. There are a very limited number of search commands that currently work in Google Talk Guru. As you can see from the screenshot above, searches for international times aren't supported (#1 and #2 above), but weather search (#3) and even a simple web search (#4) are. The web search is kinda like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google.com -- it returns only the first result for your search quer [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Google: Web Search

As popular unrest has spread throughout the Middle East and led to the overthrow or ouster of governments in Tunisia, Egypt and potentially elsewhere (stay tuned), pro-democracy activists in China have also called for protests and a "Jasmine Revolution," which is a reference to the Tunisian revolt. Ever vigilant against democratic reforms, the Chinese government has more successfully cracked down on the popular expression of discontent than the regimes of the Middle East. For example the word "jasmine" has reportedly been blocked by Chinese authorities on social networking sites. Now Goo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Business Issues | Google: Gmail | Google: Outside US

Google appears to be testing display ads in Gmail. I discovered the following image ad in my own Gmail account this morning, and Google has since confirmed a test. Image ads have made their way into paid search on Google.com and various other properties on Google. But this was really jarring for me to encounter. It's the only such ad I saw (next to an email from a clothing retailer in my inbox) after purposely looking for others. I'm sure it's a test to see how users react and what the response rates are. Gmail is formally a part of the "Google Display Network": Your text, image, ri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Google: AdSense | Google: Gmail | Top News

The US General Services Administration announced that it was moving to Google Apps and The Cloud for email, etc. It becomes the first federal agency to do so. The GSA said it will save more than $15 million over five years. The contract is worth just under $7 million and being implemented by Google partner Unisys Corp. The government said the following in its press release about the rationale: The contract provides for an easily accessible suite of services, including e-mail and collaboration tools, to facilitate a more mobile work force.  While agencies have moved sub-entities’ e-mai [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Legal

Google this evening has launched what it calls "priority inbox" for Gmail. It uses a variety of algorithmic and machine learning techniques to automatically capture and organize "important" emails and de-emphasize other email. It's like a spam filter in reverse: Gmail's servers look at several types of information to identify the email that's important to you, including who you email and chat with most, how often you email with these people, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read. If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, you can use the buttons to correctly mark a convers [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Top News

Last week Google acquired Angstro. The site has been described as a way to discover and organize information about individuals across various professional networks. Here's how Angstro describes itself: Ångströ represents the ability to hone in on highly focused, relevant news across professional networks. Where search engines such as Google and other news aggregator services have immense infrastructures that return a huge array of random results, Ångströ analyses a wide breadth of information from multiple data sources to deliver very few, yet very intelligent results. The pundit consens [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Google: General | Google: Gmail | Google: Groups | Google: iGoogle | Google: Mobile | Google: Music | Google: OpenSocial | Google: Orkut | Google: Other | Google: Product Search | Google: Social Search

Google's holding a small press gathering today at 9:30am in its San Francisco offices. Topic? The ability to place phone calls using Google Voice integrated within Gmail. Anyone with a US Gmail account will get this rolling out today and over the next few days, along with the ability to make free calls to numbers in the US and Canada. Here's the live blogging. We're going. There's a British phone box that says Google Voice on it. Gonna be related to those Gmail & Google Voice news rumor that broke today. New features that Todd Jackson is telling us about. Gmail related, and so [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice | Top News

Last May Google Wave was unveiled as a new communication platform and positioned as a successor to both email and instant messaging. It was also a powerful, real-time collaboration tool. It did other things too. Perhaps that was the problem; it offered too many possibilities. Beyond that people didn't necessarily see the need for Wave, even if it was more productive and efficient than more conventional tools. Here's what Google said when Wave launched: After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, aft [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Other | Top News