google

Feng Shui and the art of data centers

Large multinational companies are building data centers designed to flow with their environment. There's something you probably didn't expect to hear five years ago.

Microsoft, for instance, is building a data center in Ireland in which the server rooms and other facilities will be cooled with devices called air side economizers, which pipe outside air inside.

"It uses fresh air aggressively to keep your building cool," said Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, in a phone interview. "The ideal scenario is that if Ireland continues to develop wind power and hopefully wave power, you … Read more

The secret to Google's recruiting success

Much has been written about Google's intensive hiring process (including its mind-vaporizing interview questions), and how it manages to land the cream of the engineering crop. But yesterday some friends of mine got to see it firsthand.

I was in downtown San Jose for a company event and was waiting for some colleagues over at the Marriott. They were a bit late and apologized, indicating that they would have been on time but had run into a swarm of beautiful young girls pouring out of the Fairmont Hotel. My CEO asked what they were doing and were told,

We work for Google.… Read more

Google testing service to let publishers manage ads

Updated 9:25 a.m. PDT Thursday with more details from Google blog.

Google is testing a new service called Ad Manager that will give Web publishers more control over ads that appear on their site.

Google Ad Manager is a "free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their ad inventory," according to a Google blog.

Publishers participating in the beta test launched on Thursday can sell their own ad space, run ads from other online ad networks, or carry Google ads. The ads can include text, display, or … Read more

FaveBot intelligently hunts down content you're into

FaveBot is a service that keeps an eye on whatever keywords you give it to pull up related items from the Web. If you're familiar with Google Alerts, the idea is similar. In Favebot's case, you can take any keyword or set of keywords and apply it to the types of content you're looking to keep an eye on, be it photos, videos, blog posts, or podcasts. There are nine categories in all, and the system is designed to serve it up like a river of news with the most recent items appearing on the top.

What'… Read more

A glimpse inside Google's secret sauce

A new Googler has offered a rare glimpse into the process by which the search giant turns ideas into products.

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation on Tuesday as part of a webinar entitled "Innovation @ Google: a Day in the Life" hosted by KMWorld.

Brian Ussery, a technologist at an interactive marketing agency who moderates a Google forum on SearchEngineWatch.com, wrote a recap of the talk on his blog and has made the presentation available in PDF form.

The gist of the presentation is that Google's flat management structure fosters innovation … Read more

Will YouTube become the Akamai of video?

The decision to expand YouTube's application programming interfaces is the smartest move by management since it agreed to lighten Eric Schmidt's wallet to the tune of $1.6 billion in 2006.

With the announcement, developers get more direct access to the service while it also facilitates the proliferation of so-called "chromeless" players without the traditional YouTube interface and branding.

I don't want to get all giddy on you but this is a big deal. Instead of promoting YouTube as a destination site, this lays the groundwork for YouTube's transformation into a video service. If … Read more

gDocsBar now turns Google Docs into a Web archiving tool

Remember gDocsBar (download), that handy Firefox extension we checked out a few months back? It got a pretty neat update today that lets you do things that might not have been originally intended for Google's Documents and Spreadsheets service. The first is called Webclips, which is a fancy way of saying automatic copy and paste. If you find a big chunk of content you like, you can simple copy it, then drag it into the toolbar. gDocsBar will create a new document out of whatever you've highlighted, and preserve, as much as possible, the formatting and links.

The … Read more

Canadian city puts Google Earth to good use

Nanaimo, a smallish city close to Vancouver, Canada, has been feeding Google Earth information from its municipal agencies for five years. The result is that citizens can look up details on real estate, individual businesses, zoning permits, public transit, and fire engine dispatches in real time, using one program. Is this the beginning of a trend toward making public information accessible in a way that doesn't undermine privacy? Or does it give Google too much power?

Read the full story on Time: "How Google Earth Ate Our Town"

Did Google make a mistake with DoubleClick?

Now that the Google-DoubleClick deal has been approved by European lawmakers, the online giant has finally taken control over one of the most important display advertising firms in the world. And while some are calling this a great day for Google, I'm not so quick to agree.

What, exactly, makes this such a great day for Google? Is it because it can solidify its position as the world's premier online ad firm? If so, I thought it already was: Google's total share of online advertising revenue before the DoubleClick deal was over 60 percent and no company was even close. If it wasn't that, was it because Google finally had a leg up in the display ad business where it has floundered for years? Possibly. But considering that DoubleClick only generated about $365 million in revenue last year, I just don't think this is a major step forward for the company.

I simply don't know how anyone can say the Google-DoubleClick deal was good for Sergey, Larry, and Eric. And if you look at the numbers and what Google is actually adding in this deal, it looks even worse.

If you ask me, Google made a mistake.… Read more

Tim Berners-Lee: Google could be superseded by the Semantic Web

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, isn't satisfied living on his past laurels. At every opportunity he talks up the Semantic Web, which he calls the "Web of the future."

In a recent article in the Times Online, he said that what Google has done so far pales in comparison with what the Semantic Web will bring. Social -networking leaders Facebook and MySpace will eventually be trumped by networks that connect all types of things, not just people, he said. To be clear, he wasn't saying that Google is doomed.

In the … Read more