Monthly Archives: October 2015

Looking back at Marie Curie’s radical discovery: How the Mother of Modern Physics might have used Google Apps

Posted by Erzsi Sousa, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google for Work Blog.)

Editor's note: We’re jumping into our Delorean to explore how some of our favorite historical figures might have worked with Google Apps. Today, in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we imagine how Marie Curie’s discovery of radioactivity, which won a Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern cancer treatment, might have played out in a Google Apps universe.

Consider what Marie Curie accomplished in the face of adversity and with few resources. Despite being refused a place at the French Academy of Sciences and almost denied her first Nobel Prize for being a woman, she continued her work undeterred, securing a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry and developing methods for treating cancer with radiation therapy. To celebrate her, we explore how she might have worked in a different time — by using some of the tools we use today.

The radioactivity in Curie’s lab was so strong that it harmed her health — archivists today still use protective gear to handle her papers. Instead of carrying these radioactive documents, Curie could have kept them in the cloud with Google Drive, allowing for easy access whenever and wherever she needed them, without risking her well-being. Drive’s organization features could also have helped her organize her files and notes in folders, easily distinguishable by color and category.
Her easy access to files would also be secure with Drive’s built-in security stack. And to prevent anyone from stealing her discoveries, Marie Curie could have conveniently protected all of her files using the Security Key for 2-step verification along with password protection. This would ensure that she was the only one who had complete access to all of her work (she may even have thrown on a screen protector to shield her work from spying eyes on the train). To share the right documents with only the right people, Marie could have used sharing controls to give different groups access to relevant research.

With the voice typing feature in Google Docs that supports 40 languages, she could have dictated her numerous notes in her native Polish without stopping her research. She could have then used Google Translate to convert her papers into other languages, so that the wider global science community could see what she was working on.


Curie could have used Gmail’s Priority Inbox to create labels and organize her messages related to research, teaching and fundraising. Each label filters emails into its own section in her inbox, making it easy to notice new emails when they arrive. She might have created a “Physicist Community” label for correspondences with Pierre and other influential scientists like Henri Becquerel and Albert Einstein. She might also have used a “Fundraising” label to organize messages from members of the press and government who funded her research, including U.S. presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover.
Even Marie Curie could have been the victim of seemingly neverending reply-all email threads. With Gmail, she could have avoided these distractions by muting the message so responses are automatically archived. For example, Curie could have muted the message from her Sorbonne colleagues who abused “reply all” in RSVP emails or broke out into a physics debate, letting her focus on important emails only.
With Google Hangouts, Curie could have broadcast her physics classes to a global audience using Hangouts on Air. As the first woman professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, making her classes available online could have given more women access to lectures from a renowned physicist during a time when many universities wouldn’t admit female students. She might even have started her own grassroots movement, using live video chats to bring advanced science into the homes, coffee shops, underground classrooms, etc., of whoever chose to tune in.

Marie Curie accomplished award-winning work, even without access to the most advanced lab technology of the time. It’s humbling to consider that despite any limitations she encountered, Curie’s pioneering work in radioactivity remains so relevant today as we continue to make advances in not just physics and chemistry but also engineering, biology and medicine, including cancer research, on the basis of her discoveries.

Looking back at Marie Curie’s radical discovery: How the Mother of Modern Physics might have used Google Apps

Posted by Erzsi Sousa, Product Marketing Manager

Editor's note: We’re jumping into our Delorean to explore how some of our favorite historical figures might have worked with Google Apps. Today, in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we imagine how Marie Curie’s discovery of radioactivity, which won a Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern cancer treatment, might have played out in a Google Apps universe.

Consider what Marie Curie accomplished in the face of adversity and with few resources. Despite being refused a place at the French Academy of Sciences and almost denied her first Nobel Prize for being a woman, she continued her work undeterred, securing a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry and developing methods for treating cancer with radiation therapy. To celebrate her, we explore how she might have worked in a different time — by using some of the tools we use today.

The radioactivity in Curie’s lab was so strong that it harmed her health — archivists today still use protective gear to handle her papers. Instead of carrying these radioactive documents, Curie could have kept them in the cloud with Google Drive, allowing for easy access whenever and wherever she needed them, without risking her well-being. Drive’s organization features could also have helped her organize her files and notes in folders, easily distinguishable by color and category.

Her easy access to files would also be secure with Drive’s built-in security stack. And to prevent anyone from stealing her discoveries, Marie Curie could have conveniently protected all of her files using the Security Key for 2-step verification along with password protection. This would ensure that she was the only one who had complete access to all of her work (she may even have thrown on a screen protector to shield her work from spying eyes on the train). To share the right documents with only the right people, Marie could have used sharing controls to give different groups access to relevant research.

With the voice typing feature in Google Docs that supports 40 languages, she could have dictated her numerous notes in her native Polish without stopping her research. She could have then used Google Translate to convert her papers into other languages, so that the global science community could see what she was working on.


Curie could have used Gmail’s Priority Inbox to create labels and organize her messages related to research, teaching and fundraising. Each label filters emails into its own section in her inbox, making it easy to notice new emails when they arrive. She might have created a “Physicist Community” label for correspondences with Pierre and other influential scientists like Henri Becquerel and Albert Einstein. She might also have used a “Fundraising” label to organize messages from members of the press and government who funded her research, including U.S. presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover.

Even Marie Curie could have been the victim of seemingly neverending reply-all email threads. With Gmail, she could have avoided these distractions by muting the message so responses are automatically archived. For example, Curie could have muted the message from her Sorbonne colleagues who abused “reply all” in RSVP emails or broke out into a physics debate, letting her focus on important emails only.

With Google Hangouts, Curie could have broadcast her physics classes to a global audience using Hangouts on Air. As the first woman professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, making her classes available online could have given more women access to lectures from a renowned physicist during a time when many universities wouldn’t admit female students. She might even have started her own grassroots movement, using live video chats to bring advanced science into the homes, coffee shops, underground classrooms, etc., of whoever chose to tune in.

Marie Curie accomplished award-winning work, even without access to the most advanced lab technology of the time. It’s humbling to consider that despite any limitations she encountered, Curie’s pioneering work in radioactivity remains so relevant today as we continue to make advances in not just physics and chemistry but also engineering, biology and medicine, including cancer research, on the basis of her discoveries.

Setting up company-owned devices now easier with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

Do you purchase and give your employees Android phones and tablets to use at work? If so, our updated EMM solution now makes it easier for those employees to get their devices up and running, while also affording you complete management control.

For organizations that have enabled Android for Work, a new option in the Admin console (Device management > Mobile > Device management settings) is now available to manage company-owned devices running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).
When you enable that option, an employee who adds a work account to a new device will be asked if the organization owns that device. Once confirmed, the Google Apps Device Policy app will automatically install and complete the steps necessary to provision the device and the user’s work account. That employee will then be ready to go—they can easily find approved mobile apps in the Google Play for Work store, and they’ll be signed in to any Google applications (like Gmail and Drive).
    
Once set up, an employee’s company-owned device will be governed by full device management (MDM) and application management (MAM) capabilities, meaning you’ll be able to require passwords, remotely wipe company information, and approve apps to be used at work. Furthermore, you’ll now be able to restrict select wireless and network settings (like mobile network, WiFi, and VPN), sharing settings (like screen capture and USB file transfer), user/account creation, and the ability to factory reset the device. Support for company-owned devices can be enabled at the domain or OU level.

In addition to the changes outlined above, which apply to company-owned Android devices running 6.0 (Marshmallow), we’ve streamlined the account setup flow for user-owned devices running 4.4 (KitKat) and 5.x (Lollipop). Employees with these devices no longer need to manually install the Google Apps Device Policy app from the Play for Work store to set up their devices; instead, the Device Policy app will be automatically installed and activated.

Check out the Help Center articles below for more information. These features will roll out gradually over the course of the next few weeks.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Set up device owner on company-owned devices
Help Center: Configure mobile device settings

Trend or treat: Searching for the top Halloween costumes

“How many days until Halloween?”
“What should I be for Halloween?”

In the weeks leading up to All Hallows’ Eve you turn to Google Search to ask these two crucial questions. So with just days left to perfect a costume for yourself, your kid, your pooch or your partner, here’s a look at some of the top Halloween costume trends across the United States. For more, see Frightgeist, our Google Trends Halloween hub.

Hair-raising
If your costume involves a certain familiar ‘do, prepare to have company. Get-ups based on the bombastic GOP candidate for President are spiking, with the top-related search being “Donald Trump wig.” And don’t go looking for blue or purple hair-dye at the last minute on Saturday: chances are it will already have been bought up by kids dressing up as Disney’s “Descendants” characters Mal and Evie.
And if you’re aiming for a unique costume, you might want to avoid buns on the side of your head too. “Star Wars” is the second most searched costume nationwide, and within that Princess Leia reigns supreme above Dark Side standbys Stormtrooper and Darth Vader.

Superhero Squad
“Suicide Squad” may not hit box offices until next summer, but one character from the film is already making a killing in costume searches. “Harley Quinn” takes the top search spot nationwide (rival Batman is in fifth place). But Harley and Bruce Wayne are just a few of the superheroes (and super villains) you can look for this weekend: People are also donning their cuffs for Wonder Woman, their creepy facepaint for Joker, their bodysuits for Catwoman, and their half shell as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (T-U-R-T-L-E Power!). Even lesser-known characters like Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wasp are getting a boost from film franchises like “The Avengers” and “Ant-Man.”

Frightful Fidos
“Dog costume” is always a top search around Halloween—but not because you’re dressing up as Snoopy or Scooby. No, you’re searching for the cutest costume for your four-legged friend. In addition to being adorable, the top dog costumes are just as “Star Wars”-filled as the top human costumes. We assume that’s because they’ve already got the fur and/or ears to make it work.
If dressing your pooch as Chewy feels like asking for trouble, other popular canine costumes include “lion,” “dinosaur,” “shark” and … Olaf. Because—ahem—you still can’t let “Frozen” go.

Better together
When you want a partner in crime or just want insurance against looking silly solo, couples costumes are the way to go. This year, you’re dressing up as famous pop culture pairs like Bonnie and Clyde (the top couples costume overall), Jasmine and Aladdin, Woody and Jessie from "Toy Story," Danny and Sandy from "Grease," and Barbie and Ken. You’re keeping that Halloween realness with searches for Gomez and Morticia Addams and Beetlejuice (#2 on the list, and based on Google Images subject to lots of interpretation). And you’re bringing new meaning to the phrase “I’m dressing up with my boo” with searches for a “Boo and Sully” costume from “Monsters, Inc.”

The treat in “trick or treat”
Even for adults, Halloween is an excuse to eat junk food. In the past month you’ve searched for candy corn, candy apples and Halloween variations on all of your favorite sweets, from donuts to pudding cups to Kit Kats. But one candy reigns supreme: marshmallows (no, not that marshmallow) are the top searched candy over the past month.

Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who, despite the above, is still taking recommendations for this year’s costume

Native Ads on DoubleClick boost Trovit’s mobile CPMs by 120%

As consumers spend more and more time on their mobile phones, providing ad experiences that respect their context is more important than ever before. Accordingly, publishers are increasingly embracing native ads -- highly customized advertising units that seamlessly integrate in a user’s content experience without being disruptive. However, creating and delivering these ads can be a challenge. That is why earlier this year we launched Native Ads on DoubleClick, and publishers like Trovit are beginning to see the results.

European publisher Trovit, a classified search engine for property, jobs, cars, products and holiday rentals, had over 50% of its total traffic in some countries coming from mobile devices. To grow mobile revenue while delivering better ad experiences to users, Trovit tested native ads on their apps, powered by DoubleClick, in two of their markets. Based on the promising tests, they expanded their native ads strategy to six more markets. The results: net revenue grew significantly with CPM growth up to 120% in certain markets.

Learn more about Trovit’s strategy and how DoubleClick helped here.

Posted by Nataliya Kozak
Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick

Dev Channel Update for Chrome OS

The Dev channel has been updated to 48.0.2546.0 (Platform version: 7583.0.0) for all Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of bug fixes, security updates and feature enhancements. A list of changes can be found here.

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our forum or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels? Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue...’ in the Chrome menu (3 horizontal bars in the upper right corner of the browser).

Matthew Yuan
Google Chrome

Boo! Hide n’ Street…View

Are you seeking a Halloween fright without hopping on a flight? Look no further than our creepy crop of spooky sites in Street View. Just in time for All Hallows’ Eve, you can go on a virtual journey to see the world’s most petrifying places—from safely behind your screen. 

Few places have more history (or horrors!) than Bran Castle in Romania. On the border of Transylvania, “Dracula’s Castle” is home to Bram Stoker’s infamous bloodsucker. Walking through the castle, with sun streaming in the windows, you may feel a false sense of confidence...but beware what awaits you after night falls.


For another shiver up your spine, visit the Isla de las Muñecas Xochimilco in Mexico, where a young girl died mysteriously years ago. For the last 50 years, the trees have been adorned with decaying dolls, which people have left behind in memory of the tragedy.



Next on your tour of terror: Bodie State Historic Park in northern California. An abandoned town from the gold rush, you can tour one of the gold mines from the early 1900s and walk the deserted streets. Preserved in a state of arrested decay, the eerie silence feels ominous to its visitors.



If you’re feeling adventurous, why not stop by Gunkanjima or “Battleship Island” in Japan? The set for the villain’s lair in James Bond’s Skyfall, the decaying industrial wasteland used to be a booming coal mining town until the 1970s, when the island was abandoned. Now you take your life in your hands as you walk beneath the deteriorating concrete structures as the wind blows in from the ocean.



If haunted houses are more your speed, the zombie apocalypse at the 13th Gate Haunted House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana may be for you. Or stop for a drink at The Stanley Hotel, the site of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film The Shining, where you can ponder the meaning of “redrum.”


One thing’s for sure: This tour of spooky places on Google Maps is sure to get your cauldron bubbling. Happy Halloween!

Posted by Susan Cadrecha, Google Maps Zombie Bride

Source: Google LatLong


Detect and get rid of unwanted sneaky mobile redirects

In many cases, it is OK to show slightly different content on different devices. For example, optimizing the smaller space of a smartphone screen can mean that some content, like images, will have to be modified. Or you might want to store your website’s menu in a navigation drawer (find documentation here) to make mobile browsing easier and more effective. When implemented properly, these user-centric modifications can be understood very well by Google.

The situation is similar when it comes to mobile-only redirect. Redirecting mobile users to improve their mobile experience (like redirecting mobile users from example.com/url1 to m.example.com/url1) is often beneficial to them. But redirecting mobile users sneakily to a different content is bad for user experience and is against Google’s webmaster guidelines.


A frustrating experience: The same URL shows up in search results pages on desktop and on mobile. When a user clicks on this result on their desktop computer, the URL opens normally. However, when clicking on the same result on a smartphone, a redirect happens and an unrelated URL loads.

Who implements these mobile-only sneaky redirects?

There are cases where webmasters knowingly decide to put into place redirection rules for their mobile users. This is typically a webmaster guidelines violation, and we do take manual action against it when it harms Google users’ experience (see last section of this article).   

But we’ve also observed situations where mobile-only sneaky redirects happen without site owners being aware of it:

  • Advertising schemes that redirect mobile users specifically
    A script/element installed to display ads and monetize content might be redirecting mobile users to a completely different site without the webmaster being aware of it.
  • Mobile redirect as a result of the site being a target of hacking
    In other cases, if your website has been hacked, a potential result can be redirects to spammy domains for mobile users only.

How do I detect if my site is doing sneaky mobile redirects?

  1. Check if you are redirected when you navigate to your site on your smartphone
    We recommend you to check the mobile user experience of your site by visiting your pages from Google search results with a smartphone. When debugging, mobile emulation in desktop browsers is handy, mostly because you can test for many different devices. You can, for example, do it straight from your browser in Chrome, Firefox or Safari (for the latter, make sure you have enabled the “Show Develop menu in menu bar” feature).
  1. Listen to your users
    Your users could see your site in a different way than you do. It’s always important to pay attention to user complaints, so you can hear of any issue related to mobile UX.
  2. Monitor your users in your site’s analytics data
    Unusual mobile user activity could be detected by looking at some of the data held in your website's analytics data. For example, looking at the average time spent on your site by your mobile users could be a good signal to watch: if all of a sudden, your mobile users (and only them) start spending much less time on your site than they used to, there might be an issue related to mobile redirections.

    To be aware of wide changes in mobile user activity as soon as they happen, you can for example set up Google Analytics alerts. For example, you can set an alert to be warned in case of a sharp drop in average time spent on your site by mobile users, or a drop in mobile users (always take into account that big changes in those metrics are not a clear, direct signal that your site is doing mobile sneaky redirects).

I’ve detected sneaky redirects for my mobile users, and I did not set it up: what do I do?

  1. Make sure that your site is not hacked.
    Check the Security Issues tool in the Search Console, if we have noticed any hack, you should get some information there.
    Review our additional resources on typical symptoms of hacked sites, and our case studies on hacked sites.
  2. Audit third-party scripts/elements on your site
    If your site is not hacked, then we recommend you take the time to investigate if third-party scripts/elements are causing the redirects. You can follow these steps:
    A. Remove one by one the third-party scripts/elements you do not control from the redirecting page(s).
    B. Check your site on a mobile device or through emulation between each script/element removal, and see when the redirect stops.
    C. If you think a particular script/element is responsible for the sneaky redirect, consider removing it from your site, and debugging the issue with the script/element provider.

Last Thoughts on Sneaky Mobile Redirects

It's a violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a page with the intent of displaying content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler (more information on sneaky redirects). To ensure quality search results for our users, the Google Search Quality team can take action on such sites, including removal of URLs from our index.  When we take manual action, we send a message to the site owner via Search Console. Therefore, make sure you’ve set up a Search Console account.

Be sure to choose advertisers who are transparent on how they handle user traffic, to avoid unknowingly redirecting your own users. If you are interested in trust-building in the online advertising space, you may check out industry-wide best practices when participating in ad networks. For example, the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Inventory Quality Guidelines are a good place to start. There are many ways to monetize your content with mobile solutions that provide a high quality user experience, be sure to use them.

If you have questions or comments about mobile-only redirects, join us in our Google Webmaster Support forum.

Written by Vincent Courson & Badr Salmi El Idrissi, Search Quality team

Meet the 12 Doodle 4 Google 2015 finalists from India and vote to choose the winners!


Screen Shot 2015-10-26 at 11.02.18 AM.png

Entries now open for online voting for users to choose the winner

We’re very excited that the annual Doodle4Google (D4G) competition with the theme ‘If I could create something for India, it would be’’ has reached its final stages. And we are glad to announce our 12 Finalists.

Like all previous years, this year the competition has also seen amazing response and entries have come in from across the country! As always, this year’s D4G participants are grouped into three categories: Group 1 comprising students from Class 1 to 3; Group 2 with students from Class 4 to 6; and Group 3 with students from Class 7 to 10.

These entries went through two rounds of judging, first by a group of Art Schools, and then by our national jury of Cartoonist Ajit Ninan and Creative Artist Rob. Details of the finalists along with their doodles are showcased at www.google.co.in/doodle4google

You get to now vote for your favorites online to choose one winner from each group. Online voting to pick the final winner has been ongoing from October 23 and will close on November 9. Finally, on the basis of your votes and on the basis of the ranking by the reputed national jury, the national winner will be selected from all the finalists. The winning doodle will be placed on the google.co.in homepage on November 14, National Children’s Day.

Here is the list of the 12 finalists from across India:

Group 1: class 1 to 3
1.     Ishita Jain, St. Mary's Convent Sr. Sec. School, Bhopal
2.     Ashish Dharne, Bishop Cotton Boys’ School, Bengaluru
3.     P Karthik, Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan, Visakhapatnam
4.     Aarushi Jain, G.D. Goenka International School, Surat

Group 2: class 4 to 6
1.     Saubhagya Kalia, Sri Aurobindo School, Chandigarh
2.     Bhumika Shree, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Godda
3.     P Ramya,  Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan, Visakhapatnam
4.     Saloni Singh, UK Convent School, Bhopal

Group 3: class 7 to 10
1.     Varsha Yeshwanth, The Hindu Senior Secondary School, Chennai
2.     Ashita Sharma, Mother Mary's School, New Delhi
3.     Samhita Lokesh, Freedom International School, Bengaluru
4.     Sumedh H Supe, Delhi Public School, Udaipur

About the History of the Doodle:
Over the years, doodles on the Google homepage have made search on Google more fun and enjoyable for its users worldwide. When doodles were first created, nobody had anticipated how popular and integral they would become to the Google search experience. Nowadays, many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle and some even collect them!

Doodles are known as the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. Having a little bit of fun with the corporate logo by redesigning it from time to time is unheard of at many companies but at Google, it is a part of the brand. While the doodle is primarily a fun way for the company to recognize events and notable people, it also illustrates the creative and innovative personality of the company itself.

Posted by Sapna Chadha, Director of Marketing, Google India

Faster, smoother and safer videos on Chrome

Chrome is one of the world's most popular ways to watch video, with around 3,000 hours of video watched every second. Whether you're singing along with Taylor Swift, binge-watching Breaking Bad or learning about NASA’s Pluto mission—no matter what you watch, we make sure that your videos look great and load fast when you’re using Chrome.

Faster, leaner, crisper

Videos today have higher resolution, richer color and more frames per second. That's great news for you, but as video quality increases, it's harder to stream and play it without interruption. So we’ve been working on keeping Chrome lean so you can watch eye-poppingly high-definition videos. When you use Chrome to watch video on sites like YouTube, your videos load faster and look better than ever before. That's because Chrome supports the VP9 video format, which uses up to 40% less data and higher quality videos.

View: H.264 on 3GH.264 on WiFiVP9 on 3GVP9 on WiFi

We optimize for your data plan, battery life and processing power without sacrificing quality and with support for the latest high-definition formats. We’ve also worked with partners like YouTube and Amazon to reduce power consumption up to 25% by transitioning away from Flash.

Keep your videos buttery smooth

Videos really are moving pictures—each picture is called a “frame”. Those frames are recorded by a video camera, and then displayed at regular intervals by your screen so you can see it as a smooth video. A typical video is recorded at 30 frames per second, and a typical screen displays at 60 times a second—so ideally, one frame is on the screen for two refreshes, and you see smooth video. Often that doesn’t happen—many videos aren’t recorded at exactly 30 frames per second, and many screens don’t display at exactly 60 times per second—which leads to inconsistent or jerky video. We’ve been working to take account of these variations in Chrome, so we can more consistently hit two frames per refresh. That means your video looks smoother.

In this example, 32% of video frames are displayed for the wrong length of time and 5 frames never display.  

Now almost all frames are shown at regular intervals, and every frame is displayed.

Your connection may not always be perfect, so we helped build a new open standard that your video provider uses to intelligently adjust video settings—and if your Internet connection speed dips, video quality will adjust without your input. That means you get up to 50% fewer video interruptions.

Keeping you secure

Watching videos on the web used to require downloading and installing a plugin. Plugins are separate programs from the browser and can cause problems, including malware and tracking of your browsing habits across websites.

To combat this, we’ve been working with our partners to create new web standards to support premium content through HTML5. Many leading video providers like YouTube, Amazon and Play Movies now use these standards to deliver video in Chrome, so you don’t have to worry about nasty surprises.

With Chrome, you get the fastest, safest experience while you watch. So you can explore all the great video on the web—to learn, play or get inspired!

Posted by Renganathan Ramamoorthy, Product Manager and Patron of Playbacks

Video images: Blender Foundation | www.blender.org