I was saddened to see the news that Aaron Swartz had committed suicide. Such a tragedy. Swartz is known for a wide-range of things, such as helping create Reddit, RSS and being an internet activist. But I remember him most as one of the earliest Google bloggers. The Google Weblog went up on March 17, […]
As part of its birthday celebration, Google is letting users search an old version of its index — and the results show just how much things have changed over the years. You can step back in time to search Google’s index from January 2001. What was happening that month? George W. Bush first took office, […]
With Microsoft’s current advertising campaign still leaving many people shaking their heads in wonder, TechCrunch has an idea: follow the lead of Ask.com. Jason Kincaid confesses that Ask’s ad — the one that shows a young woman “exercising” (ahem) on a stripper pole in her house — actually made him curious enough to click through […]
Ever since the launch of Google Universal Search, Google has been showing videos in the web search results. But sometimes, there are more than one video shown in the web search results and, in many cases, those multiple videos will take up the space of 2 or more of the ten results shown. Philipp Lenssen […]
Sick of sites that force you to sit through a Flash splash screen? Now Google’s offering a “Skip Intro” link to save you that annoyance. Plus, Google’s also offering to translate your queries into other languages. More on both, below.
Last December, Vint Cerf — Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist — said Google CEO Eric Schmidt will provide official statements to the press, if needed, within an hour. Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped decided to test that claim. He generated a list of questions from readers and sent them in. A month later, he’s still waiting […]
Google Books Adds Hand Scans from TechCrunch reports finding more scans of fingers in Google Book Search. This time the fingers were spotted in a copy of the 1855 edition of “The Gentleman’s Magazine” on this page. This is not the first time we have seen fingers in Google Book Search. Philipp Lenssen reported a […]
Philipp Lenssen reports via Ben Ari’s blog that an Israeli court has compelled Google to hand over the IP address of a Blogger account. The conditions of this require that the blogger, who allegedly committed slander, not reply to an anonymous email to reply to the motion. Since this blogger did not reply to the […]
Google Blogoscoped reports that Google has dropped the “video” link within the main top navigation at Google and replaced it with a “products” link. You can now find the “video” link by clicking on the “more” link, which will expand and show the video option at the far bottom of that drop down.
Tomorrow is Halloween and we have already begun seeing some home page designs, easter eggs, and custom applications themed for the day. Here is a preview of what we have spotted so far.
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google pulled the special Roald Dahl Logo early, possibly due to anti-Semitic concerns. Google released a statement saying “Google has decided to remove its Doodle of Roald Dahl based on user concerns.” Google has not explained what those concerns might have been. But some believe it may have been about the […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that a Polish newspaper says that a 23-year-old polish man was arrested for Google bombing. Marek W. from Cieszyn is accused of somehow causing the Polish president Lech Kaczyński’s web site to rank tops for “kutas,” which translates to penis. Marek reportedly used software to help produce the ranking. When questioned, he […]
Philipp Lenssen reported that Google is now using the Google Promotion label within Google Product Search results, for a promotion of the Google Checkout service above listings. Ionut Alex. Chitu saw this for a product search on watch and sent Philipp a screen capture. I don’t see the promotion box coming up myself, though Danny […]
Google Stops “Related Links” Service from Google Blogoscoped reports that Google has stopped their Related Links product without telling anyone. Google told Philipp Lenssen that they shut down Related Links on April 30th. They said they decided to pull out the most “compelling functionalities of Related Links and integrated them into new and improved products, […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google Calendar has added a gallery of public calendars that users can subscribe to. The directory is cataloged by Top Picks, TV shows, Events, Sports, Entertainment, Miscellaneous, Holidays and By Google. Wouldn’t it be nice if the By Google category showed scheduled Google Search updates?
Both Yahoo and Google seem to be testing new search results pages. Karl Ribas found that Yahoo is testing a design that has a thin top blue bar above search results. The blue really doesn’t remind me of Yahoo—Yahoo to me is about the purple and white colors. But the blue does remind me of […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that dozens if not hundreds of Google Personalized Home Page users have lost their personalized settings. As of now, I currently see my customized and tailored Google home page but literally hundreds of people are commenting at Google Blogoscoped, Digg.com and Google Groups about this exact issue.
The Google Mac Blog was hacked this weekend, at least the second time an official Google blog has been hacked. It was restored fairly quickly. In somewhat related news, Chris Pirillo noticed Google Calendar users storing their private passwords in their public calendars.
Via Google Blogoscoped, another round of the Google services navigation testing, where Google has put the “Other Searches” links normally above the search box at the top of the page. This type of placement was first spotted last month on both the Google home page and on search results pages. The latest version changes the […]
Philipp Lenssen a couple days ago reported Super-Close Google Maps Zooms which got many people saying wow! Philipp discovered that these high-resolution images of camels, people, swimming pools and beach goers was actually from featured content in Google Earth, visible through Google Maps via hacked URLs. Google Sightseeing has a nice explanation of how these […]
Turkish Court Orders YouTube Blocked at Forbes.com reports a court order has been submitted to block YouTube in Turkey. The reason was because a video was found insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The head of Turk Telekom said they have begun enforcing the ban immediately. Philipp Lenssen has a screen capture […]
Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has published an unofficial Google Censorship FAQ. In this document he answers over 35 questions related to Google censorship. Yes, Google does censor search results in some countries. Have more questions, check out the Google Censorship FAQ.
Philipp Lenssen spotted plus box results at Google for Google Video results. He noticed it for a search on nightwish videos, but I do not see it myself. For a screen capture check out Philipp’s Google Blogoscoped. We have covered two other plus box results in the past. Google “Plus Box” Puts Maps In Search […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that when you begin typing a search in at Google China, Google begins offering you suggestions. At Google.com, the default is not to give you suggestions, you have to go directly to Google Suggest to get that feature. It appears that Google China, by default, has Google Suggest turned on. Interesting.
I am a huge Google News user, and at 10:08:42 AM (EST) this morning, Google News began flaking out for me. It was returning 500 errors, graphics weren’t loading, searches weren’t working and so on. I waited a bit and it came back, but then it had more issues. Philipp Lenssen has a unique screen […]
The Inquirer reports that a user received an unusual error from Google when trying to access his Gmail through a Greasemonkey script. The error was a “lockdown in sector four” message, basically describing that the user account has been found to have “unusual usage” and the “account has been disabled for up to 24 hours.” […]
The Google Docs & Spreadsheets blog officially announced that when you receive an email in your Gmail account, and it contains a Google Docs or Spreadsheet file, the file should have a link to “Open as a Google Document.” I am not sure if it opens all files or just Google files. I tested emailing […]
China censorship damaged us, Google founders admit at The Guardian has a quote from one of Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, when asked about Google censoring content in China, “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google launched a new blog named the Google Test Blog. The Welcome to the Google Testing Blog by Google Engineer, Allen Hutchison, explains that Google will be sharing their debugging and testing experiences with the public.
Allen Stern designed a mock up of what it would look like, if Google added their Google Video ads to the Google search results page. It is pretty funny and you would hope that Google would never take it this far. The inspiration for Allen Stern’s design was based on the recent news that Google […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google Images has undergone a design change. The most noticeable changes include: Removal of row by row light blue background color Addition of mouse over light blue background color on an image by image basis Removal of image URL source Removal of image file size Removal of image height and width […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google is now promoting via AdWords their own Audio Ads product. A Google search on audio ads brings back an ad from Google, leading to https://www.google.com/ads/audioads/index.html.
Since the advent of the Google and Yahoo (and more recently Virtual Earth) mapping APIs there are hundreds of developers and entrepreneurs who have built interesting and useful mashups. But how does one find them? Of course you could search on Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Live or look at some of the worthy blogs devoted […]
Last Friday, Philipp Lenssen wrote a fascinating post describing how his associate Tony Ruscoe was able to access Philipp’s Google account: “It’s your worst nightmare – someone reads parts of your Google emails, views your docs, modifies your spreadsheets, checks out your reading habits on the Google personalized homepage or Google Reader, and goes through […]
Freeing Google Books from Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped covers him trying an interesting experiment. Can Google dictate that public domain books that it has scanned and distributed on the web really be subject to restrictions on non-commercial work? First a look at how Google provides these books. Google says that PDF downloads are available […]
Philipp Lenssen reports that Google Maps has added a very useful feature to Google Maps. You can now plot multiple destinations for your trip. For example, I plotted a trip from my office, to a 100 Broadway, NY, NY and then to 14 Avenue R, Brooklyn, NY. Small feature, but very useful feature, that almost […]
Philipp Lenssen takes a look at how UTube changed their approach on their suit against YouTube. Philipp notes that when you arrive at UTube.com you now see a search box with suggested search terms below the box. When you search or click on the suggested search terms you are taken to ads by SearchFeed. In […]
I’ve been trained from internet birth that site stats are a precious thing, never to be shared. Well, not trained, but somehow I got it in my head. It’s somewhat silly, given that any site that carries advertising often reveals this information in their media kit anyway. With Search Engine Land being all new, a […]