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Interesting live blogging of event. RT @google: Follow the action at our live search event via googlesearch or webcast http://bit.ly/8wSLM2
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Google's New Minimalistic Homepage Has Gone Live
You may have noticed that our homepage is sporting a new look. Today we're excited to be releasing a new version of our classic homepage. The main feature of the new homepage is that it "fades in" — when the page first loads, it shows only our logo, the search box and the buttons. For the vast majority of people who come to the Google homepage, they are coming in order to search, and this clean, minimalist approach gives them just what they are looking for first and foremost. For those users who are interested in using a different application like Gmail, Google Image Search or our advertising programs, the additional links on the homepage only reveal themselves when the user moves the mouse. Since most users who are interested in clicking over to a different application generally do move the mouse when they arrive, the "fade in" is an elegant solution that provides options to those who want them, but removes distractions for the user intent on searching.Left: Before the fade. Right: After the fade. Click the image for a closer view.
For the past few months, we've been experimenting with homepage designs like this and have run several live tests on the site. We do these live tests when we are making a change that we think may fundamentally affect how people use the site. Initially, some of the experiment findings had us concerned, but one thing we have learned through our tests is not to judge the outcome too quickly.
A couple of weeks ago people started reporting the changes they were witnessing on Google's homepage. According to Google this was part of a new trial of approximately 10 variants of the fade-in minimalistic homepage.
Well today they have finally gone with one of the variants and introduced it to google.com.
As far as I'm aware this new change has only been implemented on google.com and is yet to come to other sites like .com.au.
Thanks
Movie Trailers And More With Google Search For Mobile
More information? Here.
Google Search’s New Interface Being Tested Now
The rumours published last week may be true after all: Google is testing a new search interface on random people, as these screenshots from Gizmodo reader Matt Karolian confirm.
via gizmodo.com.au
Bring on the change. If there's one thing all Google sites have in common is their lack of colour variety.
If these screenshots tell the truth then we may be looking at a nice new Google fairly soon (or one could hope).
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How To (Not) Create a False Rumor
And Some Important Information About Privacy on Twitter
Good Intentions
Something unprecedented has happened to me last week. I was having a good time chatting with twitter friends, when I suddenly crossed with the information of a (supposed) privacy breach on Twitter: I was told that Direct Messages (DM) show up on Google searches. (!) I am the worried sort of person when it comes to privacy, so shortly after I imprudently posted a tweet about it. Which generated a number of ReTweets (RT) that could grow exponentially, if not for a kind twitter friend who wisely asked me where that information had come from. It was then that my two neurons decided to have a little chat, and I went on a frantic search for real facts.
So, in order to prevent creating an unintentional false rumor and therefore being vexed by the loss of credibility, and probably of followers, I suggest you take the following measures when sharing information on Twitter:
1) When retweeting, always open the links you receive to certify the quality of information; and be careful not to change any character in the haste of sending it, as it could lead to a very different place, or an error page;
2) When receiving information from others, always make at least a quick research to see if it is consistent. If you came across something as important/frightening as I did, and no one besides your friend mentions it, it’s likely that the information is untrue or results of some misunderstanding. So it’s advisable to refrain from sharing at least until you can confirm it;
3) However, if you are certain that you have a breaking news in your hands and want to be the first one to share it, I suggest you deepen your research (on line or not) and back yourself up with strong facts to sustain what you have to say.
Let’s go back to my tale, shall we? I contacted the two twitter friends who had mentioned the problem in the first place, and soon found that as nice as they were, they had misinterpreted some other facts related to DMs. After making my own research and confirming this, I quickly posted an update to stop the RT flow and sent (public) messages to everyone that had retweeted my original tweet, urging them to do the same.
When applying the advice above in this experience, I was lead to some interesting information I think you would like to know.
What I’ve Learned About Privacy on Twitter
DMs Don’t Show Up on Google Searches, Unless…
You already know that Direct Messages (DM) are private tweets you can exchange with people following you. And since they are private (as in, no one else besides the sender and the receiver can see them) they don’t show up on engine searches like Google searches.
Now, I’m not contradicting myself when I say that it actually happened that some tweets meant to be private could be found on public searches. Please stay with me to understand this well.
Back in 2008 some people tried to send direct messages by typing “DM” before the username and text, when the correct choice would have been typing only “D”. The result was that they ended up sending regular tweets instead of private ones, which being public could be found on search engines. This was called DM fail. (by Pete Cashmore, aka @mashable)
Fortunately Twitter changed the functioning of DMs (thank you @Twitter_Tips for the info!), and now you can use both “D” and “DM” to send private messages without worrying that it will turn up as a public tweet. I tested this myself and I was able to send DMs using all these possibilities (when sent from the web):
- D mariblaser insert here your message
- D @mariblaser insert here your message
- DM mariblaser insert here your message
- DM @mariblaser insert here your message
If you go to Twitter Support’s page for DMs you may get confused, as their instructions still mention the “D mariblaser” formula as the only one acceptable. Don’t worry about it. Twitter did fix this problem and forgot to tell us about it. But at least it was fixed, right?
Protected Accounts: Before and After Making the Choice
Protected accounts are the ones which tweets can only be seen by those you allow to follow you. This means that all your tweets will be private (between you and your followers), and they will not show on engine searches. However…
What happens if you had a public account, and at some later point you decided to protect it? All tweets you sent before protecting it will remain being public, and therefore will appear on Google and other engine searches.
Despite this being clearly explained on Twitter Support’s page for protected accounts people still got confused and angry when finding some part of their (now) protected accounts showing up on Google. So Twitter posted an explanation about it and even The Washington Post published an article that discusses the issue, taking as example the tweets sent by username @billclinton before the account was protected. Quick note: you can see the full text of the tweets in that article, in case you got curious.
After learning my lesson, I obviously went to the web to double check the facts, and with a simple search I found the said @billclinton account, which now is protected. So, we can rest assured that protected accounts remain private.
A few additional things you might want to know:
- In case you don’t want your twitter profile to show on Google search results, here is what Twitter suggests you to do.
- What is privacy violation, from Twitter’s standpoint.
There Is Always a “But”
I really wanted to end optimistically, with reassuring news and so on, but while researching for this post I came across some troublesome information I felt compelled to share.
The Los Angeles Times also published an article on Bill Clinton’s protected account, claiming that there is a Google search engine called Googlebot that dodges the privacy of protected accounts, and gives a few more worrying examples.
On the same line of reasoning, Anthony De Rosa from gawker.com used the feature mentioned on that LA Times’ article (site:twitter.com/<user>) to find @billclinton’s tweets. Or at least a good part of them, as you can see here. If you click on the links that should lead to the tweets, you’ll end on inexistent pages, but what the Google search shows is enough to get a good glimpse of what is being said. Tell me this is not violation of privacy, and I’m not talking about Twitter’s point of view here.
If you read The Washington Post article I mentioned, you’ll know that these tweets were sent by someone impersonating Bill Clinton, and not the man himself, but there are tons of people with protected accounts who wouldn’t want to have about half their tweets opened to anyone who bothers looking up on Google. Would you, if you were in their place?
Now I ask you, have you ever had problems related to privacy on Twitter? If you have a protected account, did you (or someone else) find your protected tweets on engine searches? Please share on comments your experience, and any other information you might have.
A final note on links that might interest you:
- A guide to Twitter Chats for writers, so didactic that anyone can profit from. (by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, aka @inkyelbows)
- If you are new on Twitter, check out this cool guide. (by @mashable)
- If you were reluctant to join Twitter and now are sure you won’t, you might want to reconsider after reading this, this, and this. (all via @mashable)
How Google Search would benefit from Google Wave
Finally I had the time to watch the 1.5 hour video about Google Wave. If you're not sure what Google Wave is , below is a 10 minutes summary video.
You can think of Google Wave as a new email client that shrinks long email threads with multiple replies into one page. Since replies are sent to the receipients "as you type them" you could also think of it as an instant messaging client. Since all of these Wave things can be editted by the receipients (from now on say - participants) then it can be used as a wiki or a shared document repository. Waves could also be embedded in web pages, so you can also think about it as a blogging platform. Google wave can embedd social turn based games, so you can think of it as a social gaming platform.... Google Wave .... is .. well... Google Wave.
Google Wave could open new revenue streams for Google in the future. But I wonder how it supports the existing Google Search business model. Google generates most of its revenues from ads that appear alongside it's search results. In order to make more money it needs to attract more visitors to www.google.com. Google also wants to increase the chances a visitor would actually click an ad. That's why Google keeps improving the Google search experience, and that's why Google gets better in displaying more relevant ads.
How do you think Google Search would benefit from Google Wave ? Below are some of my random thoughts. I'd like to hear yours.
Google Wave would have a better search experience.
When user clicks the search button from inside a wave, the intent of the user is better understood from the content of the wave.The user may highlight a word inside a sentence and the click the search button which would improve search results even more.
Google Wave bots could help the user improve search results interactively (in a chat like interface) so the user won’t give up if it didn’t find what it was looking for.
Google Wave provides context to Youtube videos.
Google understands the content of YouTube videos by scanning text that link to that video. Google Wave conversations that contain a link to a video actually provide more context to that video. Google Wave would makes it easy to embedd YouTube videos and images. The more conversations Google can scan, the better video search results they would have.
Google Wave enables real time search updates.
Today, Google uses search bots to pull content from the web and analyze it. When you leave a comment on a web site, the Google search engine would not get updated until a bot visited that site. Embedded Google Wave enables users to leave comments on the website. These comments would be pushed without delay into Google search bots.
Google reached an agreement with Twitter to include Twitter updates in Google search results. Consider a Google Wave user that finds it convenient to tweet from within Google Wave client. That means Google gets the status update and pushes it to Tweeter, and not the other way around.
Google Wave enables personalized search
Each time you write something from a Google Wave you are “logged in”. Google knows what you are thinking about right now. So if you recently had a Google Wave conversation about a vacation, and an hour later searched (Googled) for Eiffel, it would display the “Eiffel Tower” links before the “Eiffel Programming language” links. It would probably also display ads for buying Flight tickets to Paris.
Facebook is about reading your friend’s activity as a stream. Unlike twitter, you mostly share updates with a predefined list of users and applications. The bigger Facebook becomes, the more difficult it is for competitors to create alternative social networks (User feel lonely in those other website, since all of their friends are on Facebook). Google Wave would enable users to easily participate and mix multiple social networks lowering the bar for new competitors ( A social network for your family, your friends, looking for a job, for your hobby, etc..). No longer would you have to visit multiple websites in order to get a customized social network experience.
So how would that benefit Google? Imagine your friend posted an update about planning a vacation. An hour later you Googled for Eiffel … you get the point, right?
So how would that benefit Google? Imagine your friend posted an update about planning a vacation. An hour later you Googled for Eiffel … you get the point, right?
