In 2008, Google removed directory links from Webmaster Tools and in December 2010, Google dropped the search box from the Google directory. Today, Google has completely removed the Google Directory as a Google service. Going to directory.google.com will show you a notice that reads the "Google Directory is no longer available." Yesterday the directory was live but today, Google quietly and without warning removed it. I believe the Google Directory was one of the first additional links added to Google, but you have to assume it was rarely used by searchers in the past few years. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other

Google has launched a new service at wdyl.com, which stands for "What Do You Love" from Google, which allows users to search for anything and see what comes back from a variety of Google's many different search resources. Over the years, Google has continued to add new products, services, portals, and features to their portfolio. Keeping up on all that Google has to offer has been hard. There are pages that show Google products options, or new products and pages that have Google ad options and the list goes on and on. One single page of all of Google's services and products is hard [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Custom Search Engine | Google: General | Google: Other

Steven Levy, the author of In The Plex, was interviewed in one of the recent "Google Talks" by Matt Cutts. Steven Levy wrote one of, if not the most, revealing books on how Google works as a company in his book. So I found it incredibly interesting to watch a Googler interview the individual who interviewed Google for several years to write his book. Levy actually was a keynote speaker at SMX West a few months ago. Here is the video: I love Matt's reaction to when Steven Levy complains how original content gets outranked by larger publishers. You can find that clip 39 minutes an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Employees | Google: Other

Do you remember this video from a few weeks ago? It was probably the funniest of Google's myriad April Fool's Day jokes. Part of the joke is actually real, as I found out Monday when my friendly mailman visited Casa McGee. Much to my surprise, and probably to the mailman's curiosity, there was a non-descript white envelope with a mailing label that said it's from "Everybody Chromercise" at an address in Aurora, Colorado. The Chromercise.com website that Google launched as part of the gag included a form where you could order a set of these finger sweatbands. I assumed it was a dead-e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: General | Google: Other | Search & Society: April Fool's

It's not even April 1st in Mountain View, but the April Fools Day comedy game is already over and I'm declaring Google the winner. Hiring autocompleters? YouTube 1911? Gmail Motion? Chromercise? Ding, ding, ding and ding. Game over. If you're planning any big pranks tomorrow, skip it. Below, what's out there now -- and a running update of what else gets discovered as April Fools Day pranks related to search. Google Hiring Autocompleters If you search with Google Instant turned on, you'll see a new link at the bottom of the search suggestions. Google is hiring Autocompleters. That link [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Other | Search & Society: April Fool's | Top News

Google has published its first edition of Think Quarterly, a 64-page online magazine/book that comes from the company's UK & Ireland offices. The first issue is dedicated to "data" as a topic and features a series of articles written by guest authors and Google employees. Hal Varian, the company's chief economist, writes about "data obesity" while Googler Tony Fagan writes about data in relation to search advertising. I couldn't tell you if the articles are any good yet, but I can say that it might be the most good-looking online magazine I've seen. The design is quite Googley: clean l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Other | Google: Outside US | Google: Think With Google

Earlier this week Apple introduced its long-awaited in-app subscription service for publishers. As part of that arrangement Apple wants its standard 30 percent cut of iTunes/app revenue. However it threw a bone to publishers by allowing all revenue from subscriptions initiated outside the iTunes environment to be kept by publishers. Many publishers are now angry that Apple wants part of their subscription dollars and wants to get between them and their customers (once again). Almost like a predator lying in wait, the very next day Google pounced and announced One Pass, an open system in wh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Google: Checkout | Google: Marketing | Google: Mobile | Google: Other | Google: Partnerships

So you or your child has already conquered the annual school science fair? And you've even dominated at the regional and state levels, too? And you're thinking to yourself, "We need a real challenge. Competing against Johnny down the block was too easy." Well, Google has something just for you: the first Google Science Fair. Any student from 13 to 18 years old can enter, no matter where you call home. The only requirements are a computer, Internet access, and a web browser (because you'll begin by building and submitting the science project online). Registration is open until April 4th. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: General | Google: Other | Google: Partnerships

Satellites have long been used for good and ill but never before have they been marshaled to help prevent human rights abuses and political violence -- before they happen. But that's the aim of a project that involves the UN, Google, Harvard and a non-profit organization called Not On Our Watch, co-founded by US actor George Clooney. The objective of what's being called "The Satellite Sentinel Project" is to monitor and thereby prevent anticipated violence expected to coincide with a vote in Sudan about whether to split the country into two: north and south. The project is the brainchild o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: General | Google: Other | Google: Outside US | Google: Partnerships

The Google Directory seems to have dropped the option to search within the directory. If you visit the Google Directory the only search box you will see is a "Google search" box. A week or two ago it was a "Search Directory" button, but that is now gone. Google is even missing the search within directory feature on the inside pages of the Google Directory. Here are before and after pictures: Google Directory Home Before: Google Directory Home Now: Google Directory Inside Page Before: Google Directory Inside Page Now: Google has not yet been reachable fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other | Google: Web Search

The latest move in Google's ongoing efforts to make the web faster is a new tool that optimizes web pages at the server level on-the-fly, with no manual work needed. It's an Apache server module called mod_pagespeed and Google describes it as a follow-up to last year's Page Speed browser add-on. "There are 1.2 million users of Page Speed," says Richard Rabbat, Google's product manager for mod_pagespeed, "but it only tells developers what's wrong with their web site. We wondered, 'Can we fix it for them?'" Google says the new Apache module has doubled the speed of a sampling of web site [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other | Google: Web Search

Louis Gray reports that Google has opened up a physical retail store, to compliment their online store. The physical store is located on the Google Campus at 2000 Charleston Road building, known as the 2000 Alza building. The building houses the Google Buzz team and "consumer-facing products" according to Gray. When Gray visited Google recently he said he found the "lobby swarming with gadget seekers today, and a line with dozens of customers looking to sport the Google logo." He took a video of the inside of the store, which shows a nice line at the checkout counter: Can you ju [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees | Google: General | Google: Marketing | Google: Other

Google announced last night that the company has invested "in the development of a backbone transmission project off the Mid-Atlantic coast" that will help support future harvesting of power from offshore wind turbines up and down 350 miles of the US East Coast. The windmills have yet to be built, but this is key infrastructure for the development of wind power on the Atlantic Coast. According to the NY Times the "backbone" project is valued at $5 billion. Google, Good Energies and a Japanese company Marubeni have all invested in the first phase of development. Google and Good Energies are [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: General | Google: Other | Google: Partnerships

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

Deadline New York reports Google might make it to the movie screen. Deadline said Groundswell Productions and producer John Morris are attempting to acquire movie rights to the book "Googled: The End of the World As We Know it." The film will be about Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, rise to riches and fame. London's Groundswell Productions said: It's about these two young guys who created a company that changed the world, and how the world in turn changed them. The heart of the movie is their wonderful edict, don't be evil. At a certain point in the evolution of a c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Critics | Google: General | Google: Other | Google: Parodies

This'll make a lot of us feel a lot dumber: Scientists have used Google to prove that Rubik's Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. So, that was about two years of my early 1980s life wasted. The UK's Daily Mail says that a Kent State University professor worked with a Google engineer and other researchers to show how silly the rest of us are for spending so long on that little, square toy: Using Google's supercomputers, a team of researchers have processed every one of the Rubik's Cube's 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different configurations to work what is the maximum number of moves ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: General | Google: Other

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

Nary a week goes by this summer that we don't hear more rumors about Google's interest in online games, social networking, and/or some combination of the two. Tonight, the Wall Street Journal is quoting unnamed sources that say Google is talking with "several makers of popular online games" to have those games included on a new social networking site "that could compete with Facebook." There's no confirmation from Google on this report, but the WSJ's sources say the game makers include Zynga, Playfish (owned by Electronic Arts), and Playdom Inc. There were reports two weeks ago that Goo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Google: Other | Google: Partnerships

Google released a report on general statistics of web pages on the Internet. The report lists basic information they retrieved over the course of "Google's crawl and indexing pipeline." The key highlights include: The average web page takes up 320 KB on the wire. Only two-thirds of the compressible material on a page is actually compressed. In 80% of pages, 10 or more resources are loaded from a single host. The most popular sites could eliminate more than 8 HTTP requests per page if they combined all scripts on the same host into one and all stylesheets on the same host into one. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other

Based on unnamed "sources," yesterday TechCrunch reported that Google had "secretly" invested more than $100 million in social gaming platform Zynga and is launching "Google Games," built partly on Zynga. Let's establish all the usual qualifiers; this is an unconfirmed story and so on. And there are plenty of times when these TechCrunch-surfaced rumors turn out to be wrong. But this one seems to be supported by a job posting ("Product Management Leader, Games – Mountain View"). Given that, here are the main elements of the TechCrunch story beyond the headline itself: The Google inv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Google: Checkout | Google: Mobile | Google: Orkut | Google: Other | Google: Partnerships | Top News