If a profile like Christian Rudder's turned up in an OKCupid user's search results, it would certainly merit a deeper look. As a Harvard graduate, who's helped launch and sell two successful companies (SparkNotes, in 1999, which sold to Barnes & Noble; OKCupid, in 2004, which sold to Match.com) and an indie musician who's appeared in the romcom, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," he'd be a catch by most standards.

Download.com caught up with Rudder, who's also OKCupid's General Manager and Editorial Director, to discuss his company's … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Translate provides a billion translations a day for 200 million users, the company revealed here Friday at its Google I/O show for developers.

Google doesn't often share details about the scale on which it operates, but Josh Estelle, leader for Google Translate's front-end and mobile engineering, had a few statistics to share about the service during a talk about it.

Estelle, who's worked on Google Translate for seven years, also said 92 percent of the usage is from people outside the United States. The Internet is famously English-centric, but it's expanding … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- A month and a half ago, Google began using its WebP image format in its Google+ app for Android, and now it's saving tremendous amounts of network usage as a result.

"We're saving many terabytes of bandwidth a day, and because of the cost factor, we're saving our users money," said Stephen Konig, a Google product manager, in a well-attended WebP Google I/O talk Friday.

Users' cost savings come because they're less likely to run into data usage caps or incur onerous roaming fees outside their home countries.

But of … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's mapping service relies on mammoth data centers, vast quantities of satellite imagery, and a fleet of Street View cars. But it also relies on you.

At the Google I/O developer show here on Friday, Google engineers described how they've overhauled Google Maps, and two areas in which information from Google users is key to that.

First, using anonymous data collected from people using Google Maps on mobile phones, it picks the best navigation routes. Second, using photos people upload to its Panoramio and Picasa photo services, it generates immersive tours that swoop around … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google long has been a firm believer that JavaScript, the programming language used to build Web apps such as Google Maps and Gmail, could shoulder a much heavier computing load.

But even as the company continues to push JavaScript's abilities with Chrome's V8 engine, some at the company believe JavaScript is pushing up against its limits. For that reason, Google developed its Dart programming language, and at the Google I/O developer show here, the company made the case for Dart.

"The ultimate goal is to get Dart into Chrome. I hope you all … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google would like to endow Chrome with Microsoft's technology for letting Web applications deal with input from mice, pens, and touch screens.

Developers of the Google browser said at the company's Google I/O show here Thursday that Microsoft's Pointer Events approach -- built into IE10, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8, and being standardized at the World Wide Web Consortium -- has some real advantages.

"We're going to start landing some experimental support in Blink for Pointer Events," said Chrome programmer Rick Byers. Blink is the open-source browser engine at … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- By now Street View is a routine part of online mapping. But people might not be so familiar with how Google actually gets the data for its 360-degree panoramic views of the world.

Street View imagery launched in 2007 with photos taken by cameras perched on cars. That's still the mainstay of the project, but there's much more to it now, and Google was showing off its methods at its Google I/O 2013 developer show here this week.

Exhibits included not just a car, but also a snowmobile, tricycle, backpack, trolley, and self-propelled underwater … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google Maps began as roads and satellite photos. Now, through a project called Ground Truth, it's becoming an ever more sophisticated virtual mirror of the real world.

But how? Google engineers described their methods Wednesday at the Google I/O show, describing how they've moved from licensing satellite photos to building 3D version of the world that can be updated in minutes.

The answer might surprise close Google watchers accustomed to the company's heavily automated, algorithmic, computer-centric way of doing things. There's plenty of that, but it also takes lots of elbow grease, said Michael … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is nearly done with its VP9 video technology, and it wants the world to use it.

At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today's dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 -- available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube -- will save bandwidth costs.

"If you adopt VP9, as you can very quickly, you'll have tremendous advantages over anyone else out there using H.264 or VP8, (its predecessor)," said VP9 engineer Ronald Bultje in … Read more