It has been an active weekend for Google. Google has added additional search options to Google Image Search. Google has also introduced a “What’s Hot” area to Google Reader Blog. Finally, Google is testing showing search history within Google search suggestions.

Google has added additional search options by style. So in addition to searching for faces or photo content types of images, or news content, you can also search for line drawings, and clip art. Here is a picture of the available style options in Google Image Search:

Google Operating System reports that some users are seeing Google web history results in Google search suggestions. So when you type a search phrase at Google.com, up comes search suggestions. Typically, those search suggestions are presented based on how popular the queries are but now Google is showing some people search results based on their search history. To me, this is a great addition to Google search suggestions. I personally do not see it, but here is a screen capture courtesy of Google Operating System:

The Google Reader Blog has added a “What’s Hot” section to the right hand navigation bar. What’s Hot is generated algorithmically, Google has not shared how exactly the algorithm works but I would expect it has something to do with shared items and reader counts.

Yesterday, Google Reader team announced that they have released a cleaner and fresher look to Google Reader. The change incorporates a less blueish color scheme and a more whitish scheme. Google has consolidated some of the features, added collapsible navigational links on the left and rounded some of the corners.

But to my surprise, the whitish color scheme is not just available on the main Google Reader, it has been ported to the iPhone version.

Here is a picture of the new Google Reader look for your browser:

Here is a picture of the new Google Reader for your iPhone:

Here is an old picture, to compare.

Google has also added more “feed bundles,” to give people more blogs and sites to subscribe to. Danny asks a good question, “pity seach engine land isn’t in your google-related or tech bundles.” Agreed, there are a bunch of sites that likely should be in that bundle.

The Google Reader Blog announced that they now are offering translation of your subscriptions.

Google Reader now gives you the ability to subscribe to blogs and sites that do not publish content in your native language. You can select the “Translate into my language” option in the feed settings and Google Reader will automatically translate the content into your language. It will also remember this setting and continue to show you the translated version of that subscription, going forward.

The Google Reader team worked closely with the Google Translate team to make this possible.

FYI, so now you can subscribe to Search Engine Land En Español just for the kicks of it.

The Gmail Blog announced a new labs option that gives Gmail users the ability to add Google Calendar, Google Docs and other gadgets directly on their Gmail interface. Plus, Steve Rubel reports Google Reader has added subscription statistics, which I find to be awesome.

Let me explore both features below.

Gmail Gadgets:

You can now add the Calendar and Docs gadgets to the left hand side of your Gmail screen, next to the Chat and Labels area. Plus, you can add any Google Gadget to that area, although it isn’t all that easy to add random gadgets. To get started, go to Gmail > Settings > Labs and turn on either the “Google Calendar gadget” or Google Docs gadget or both. Then, if you want to reorder those items on the left navigation, turn on the “Navbar drag and drop” option in the same labs section.

What if you want to add other gadgets? Currently, the last option in the labs section is for “Add any gadget by URL.” You can enable that and then copy and paste the Gadget URL, typically ending in .xml, into the add box. Google does warn that “not all gadgets are fully compatible with https, so if you’re connecting to Gmail via https, you may see mixed content warnings caused by parts of the gadgets being served over http. We’re working on fixing this where we can.”

Google Reader Subscription Statistics:

Google Reader has added detailed statistics for your subscriptions. To see the details, all you need to do is click on the “show details” link at the top right of the subscriptions name. Here is a picture:

Once you click on that link, it will open up and show you three options for charts.

(1) Last 30 Days of posting activity for that subscription:

(2) Posting activity by time of day for that subscription:

(3) Posting activity by day of week for that subscription:

Do not forget that you also have Google Reader Trends, which shows your activity as a consumer of that content.

The Google Reader Blog announced several new features added to Google Reader.

• Google has expanded the expanded the friends sharing feature to support all “supported” Google Reader languages.
• You can now tag feed items when you add a note.
• You can sort your subscriptions alphabetically or using “My Order” through drag and drop sorting.
• Plus you can see the last crawl date on the feed details view

The Google Reader blog has screen captures of all the features mentioned above, minus where to find the last crawl date. To see the last crawl date, click on a specific subscription and at the top right, click on “show details.” Here is a screen capture of what you will see in the details:

The Google Reader Blog announced they have added a few features to improve the flexibility of sharing your feeds with your friends. With the new feature, you can now manage your “Friends list” in Google Reader, separate from your Gmail chat contacts.

Why is that important? Well, when Google Reader first released friend share items, all your Gmail contacts saw all your shared feeds. So there were privacy concerns over such a feature, where Danny even called for Google to drop the feature completely until they came out with a more flexible solution.

Well, Google did not drop the feature, but they did launch this new, more flexible friend sharing feature, which should address many of the privacy concerns. It only took eight months to happen.

Almost two weeks ago, I wrote my Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items post detailing how disturbing it was that Google Reader was now sharing items with people it considered my friends, on an opt-out basis. Privacy concerns over this finally exploded this week, with Google Reader itself now reacting mainly to highlight how friend sharing can be enabled or disabled. Lost in the outcry seems to be the point that it’s always been the case that sharing any item would share it with the ENTIRE WORLD, and that hasn’t changed. But the change was significant in making more public a list of items that generally was hidden. Below, a revisit on sharing for the privacy concerned.

In a word, if you don’t want that "secret" item you’ve read via Google Reader to spill out in a way that your friends, family, enemies, or anyone can find it, DON’T SHARE IT!

How does sharing work in Google Reader? It looks like this:

See the big arrow pointing at the "Share" link? If I click on that link, the items gets Shared via my public list. MY PUBLIC LIST, as in a list the entire public can see.

Here’s how my shared items list looks internally to me. I just click on the "Your shared items" link in the left-hand navigation (the big red arrow is pointing at the right link):

After selecting that, I get a page listing my items with a message telling me that they are "publicly accessible," like this:

This isn’t new. Google’s been making shared items available to the entire public since March 2006. Here’s how my public page of shared items looks:

Because the URL is publicly accessible, ANYONE can see it. The only caveat is that they have to know where it is. If you’ve never given out the URL, then your items are somewhat safe. In addition, Google blocks these pages from being crawled and listed in search results.

Of course, click on an item from your public list (or if anyone else does), and your browser will pass along "referral" information that reveals the location to the site owner you visited from that page. So pretty safe, fairly private, but certainly not foolproof.

So why the freakout over this month’s change? As I wrote before in my earlier article:

I have a public feed of shared items here that anyone can access, if they know where to look. Why should these exact same items, being shared with a tiny subset of the entire world that they are already accessible to, freak me out?

The answer is because, as explained, while your shared items were public, pretty much no one knew where they were unless you proactively told them the location. But with Google’s change, Google Reader itself started proactively deciding people in your contact list were "friends" that should get a heads-up. Again, as I wrote:

Google Reader never asked if I wanted to be connected with my friends, i.e., whether I wanted to have Google itself start behind-the-scenes making relationships in Google Reader for me with people that previously were restricted to chat. It’s disconcerting.

Today’s Google Reader blog post doesn’t change the situation. By default, it’s still going tell all your contacts that you’ve shared an item, as my previous article details. Don’t like that? Then Google Reader suggests that you individually unshare items. Alternatively, it suggests that you tag items, then within the Settings area, enable items tagged with a particular word to be shared to the public.

Huh? How’s that help? Well, it goes back to the original situation where you have a public page, but no one knows the URL unless you tell them. Steve Rubel also describes the process here.

Frankly, a better solution would be to dump the friends sharing feature until it comes back in a new form, where you specifically and deliberately create a list of contacts that you do want to share material with. Again, as I wrote before:

I just think that if Google is going to start socializing its various applications, I need more granular control over who sees what, in the way that Facebook offers.

For more discussion, see Techmeme.

Google Reader shares private data, ruins Christmas from Felipe Hoffa has a detailed rundown of the user complaints with Google Reader’s new share with friends feature.

Felipe writes, “One week ago Google Reader’s team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out. Complaints haven’t been answered.” Yes, it was a bit shocking to see that my feeds were shared with my Gmail contacts by default. I did not opt in to allow my friends to see my feeds, Google did that for me. But is there a way to opt out?

Postscript: There appears to be really no ‘good’ way to hide your shared feeds.

Either you delete all your shared items or your delete all your Gmail contacts.

I am sure Google will now move quickly on making this feature more robust and flexible.

Former Blogger Googler Shellen joins LiveJournal from News.com reports Jason Shellen, the former Google Reader product manager, is joining LiveJournal as the vice president of product development.

Shellen announced his departure from Google in July of this year. He said he left because he has the “entrepreneurial/start-up bug,” where he needs to be with a smaller start up company. Shellen will be working in LiveJournal’s new San Francisco location in early 2008.

Google’s made a significant move toward trying to have a Facebook-like news feed and beef up its social networking aspirations by integrating Google Talk / Gmail contacts with Google Reader. I’d seen the discussion earlier, but after now experiencing it first-hand, it’s kind of scary that it isn’t more opt-in rather than opt-out.

When I logged in today, I got this message popping-up within Google Reader:

I was a bit taken aback. Let’s look again at what it tells me:

Your Reader shared items are being made available to your friends from Google Talk. You can see what these friends are sharing; they can see what you are sharing, and that you use Reader.

Really? Without asking me, items are being shared? And my friends are now flowing stuff my way?

Thinking about it more, I shouldn’t be concerned. After all, I have a public feed of shared items here that anyone can access, if they know where to look. Why should these exact same items, being shared with a tiny subset of the entire world that they are already accessible to, freak me out?

I guess it’s because Google Reader never asked if I wanted to be connected with my friends, i.e., whether I wanted to have Google itself start behind-the-scenes making relationships in Google Reader for me with people that previously were restricted to chat. It’s disconcerting.

Don’t get me wrong — it IS kind of cool. For example, here’s an example of how by clicking on the new Friends Shared Items link, I can see a list of items that have been shared only by my Google Talk contacts.

I’ve also got the ability using the new Friends tab in the Google Reader settings area to add or remove people:

Well, sort of. If you check the associated help page, it turns out that to remove someone, you have to remove them as a Gmail/Google Talk contact. Wow. How about some selective control? I might want to have "Reader friends" that are different than my Google Talk friends.

Part of the new change was also encouragement for me to create one of the new Google Profile pages. I did that, but in terms of Google Reader, it doesn’t provide any benefit to my external public feed. It doesn’t show out there.

Internally, I assume my friends see something similar to what I see for Greg Sterling:

Notice that if for some reason I decide I’ve had enough of Greg — say perhaps he begins dominating my Friends Shared Items feed in some Scobleesque way — I have the option to hide him and his items.

Overall, I do like the feature. I just think that if Google is going to start socializing its various applications, I need more granular control over who sees what, in the way that Facebook offers.

Meanwhile, add Google Reader, like Orkut, to the list of Google products that now have a social aspect. Google To Pressure Facebook To "Free" Social Data & Planning Google Earth World? from me back in September looked at how Google was said to be considering ways to socialize its products. At that time, Google Reader had no social feature. Now it does.

Inbox 2.0: Vision And Perhaps Confusion At Google And Yahoo covers more about how the email addresses that Google has — all Google Talk accounts are based on an email address — may be a key way the company might go forward to building out a stronger social network than its existing Orkut.