Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Google Maps and Waze, outsmarting traffic together
June 11, 2013
We’ve all been there: stuck in traffic, frustrated that you chose the wrong route on the drive to work. But imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow travelers ahead of you, calling out “fender bender...totally stuck in left lane!” and showing faster routes that others are taking.
To help you outsmart traffic, today we’re excited to announce we’ve closed the acquisition of
Waze
. This fast-growing community of traffic-obsessed drivers is working together to find the best routes from home to work, every day.
The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now. We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities.
We’ll also work closely with the vibrant Waze community, who are the DNA of this app, to ensure they have what’s needed to grow and prosper.
The Waze community and its dedicated team have created a great source of timely road corrections and updates. We welcome them to Google and look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world.
Posted by Brian McClendon, Vice President, Geo
Sparking a better conversation with Wildfire
July 31, 2012
Businesses around the world—from neighborhood restaurants to major retailers—are embracing social media to share information and forge stronger relationships with their fans and customers. We know because we are one of those businesses—on
Google+
,
Twitter
,
Facebook
,
Pinterest
,
YouTube
and
LinkedIn
.
Indeed, a social presence can complement all marketing campaigns—search, display, video, mobile, offline ads and more.
With this in mind, today we’re happy to share that the Wildfire team will be joining Google. Their co-founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, launched their startup just four years ago. Since then, they and their team have built a service that helps businesses like Virgin, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group and Spotify manage their social efforts across numerous social websites. It’s a platform for brands to manage their pages, apps, tweets, videos, sponsorships, ads, promotions and more, all in one place.
The ultimate goal is better and fresher content, and more meaningful interactions. People today can make their voices heard in ways that were previously impossible, and Wildfire helps businesses uphold their end of the conversation (or spark a new one).
In a
complex
and changing landscape, businesses want to manage and measure these efforts in an integrated way. We’ve been working towards this end for some time. For example, Google Analytics helps businesses
measure the contribution
of hundreds of social sites; our
Admeld service
has helped to serve ads in Facebook developers’ social apps; and our
DoubleClick platform
enables clients to run and measure ads across social websites. On Google+, brands use services like Vitrue, Buddy Media and others to manage their pages, with
many more to come
.
With Wildfire, we’re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services. We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.
Update
August 15, 2012:
Our acquisition of Wildfire has now closed.
Posted by Jason Miller, Product Management Director
Google + Quickoffice = get more done anytime, anywhere
June 5, 2012
We're happy to announce that we have acquired Quickoffice, a leader in office productivity solutions.
Today, consumers, businesses and schools use Google Apps to get stuff done from anywhere, with anyone and on any device. Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we'll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite.
Quickoffice has a strong base of users, and we look forward to supporting them while we work on an even more seamless, intuitive and integrated experience.
We're excited to welcome the Quickoffice team and their users to Google.
Posted by Alan Warren, Engineering Director, Google
We’ve acquired Motorola Mobility
May 22, 2012
The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. It’s now possible to do things we used to think were magic, or only possible on Star Trek—like get directions right from where we are standing; watch a video on YouTube; or take a picture and share the moment instantly with friends.
It’s why I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola’s StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.
Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. I would like to thank him for his efforts and am tremendously pleased that he will be working to ensure a smooth transition as long-time Googler Dennis Woodside takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility.
I’ve known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he’s been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google’s biggest bets. One of his first jobs at Google was to put on his backpack and build our businesses across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. More recently he helped increase our revenue in the U.S. from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion in under three years as President of the Americas region. Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola. As an Ironman triathlete, he’s got plenty of energy for the journey ahead—and he’s already off to great start with some very strong new hires for the Motorola team.
It’s a well known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term. Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound—as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone. That’s why it’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and why I’m confident Dennis and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO
European Commission clears Motorola deal
February 13, 2012
We’re happy that today the European Commission
approved
our proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which we
announced
in August. This is an important milestone in the approval process and it moves us closer to closing the deal. We are now just waiting for decisions from a few other jurisdictions before we can close this transaction.
As we outlined in August, the combination of Google and Motorola Mobility will help supercharge Android. It will also enhance competition and offer consumers faster innovation, greater choice and wonderful user experiences.
Posted by Don Harrison, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel
Update
February 13, 2012, 2:00pm:
The U.S. Department of Justice has also
announced
that it has closed its investigation of this acquisition.
Take a walk on the sell-side
December 2, 2011
In June, we
announced
that we are acquiring
Admeld
, a New York-based company that helps large publishers (also known as the “sell-side” by people, like me, who live and breathe display advertising) maximize their revenues from online advertising. We’re pleased that the U.S. Department of Justice has today cleared this deal. We’ll close the acquisition in the coming days and then start the real work—building improved products and services that help our publisher partners to make more informed decisions across all their ad space, and to grow their revenues.
The opportunity for major online publishers is huge...and growing. People are spending more and more time consuming online content across numerous devices, advertisers are running more online and mobile campaigns to reach them; and ads continue to get more engaging and relevant. This represents an unprecedented moment for publishers. We believe that improved technology and services can help publishers seize it and make online advertising work much better.
For now, it’s business as usual—Admeld’s products will operate separately to Google’s existing solutions (such as
DoubleClick for Publishers
and the
DoubleClick Ad Exchange
). But over time, there are opportunities to bring the best of both businesses together in a variety of ways; and to develop entirely new solutions, too.
As we do this, Admeld and Google are guided by some core shared beliefs:
We want to give publishers more
control
over their ad space, and offer more
flexible
ways to manage and sell it. Publishers’ businesses should influence the technology they use; not the other way around
We believe that publishers can make better decisions to maximize their revenues when they have better
insights
at their fingertips
We envisage a much
simpler
system that enables publishers to manage and sell their ad space—across desktop, video, mobile, tablets and more
The content produced by Google’s and Admeld’s publisher partners is the lifeblood of the Internet. We can’t wait to start building the next generation of tools and services that will help them grow their businesses.
Update
December 6, 2011
: Our acquisition of Admeld has now closed.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising
(Cross-posted on the
DoubleClick Publisher Blog
)
Google just got
ZAGAT
Rated!
September 8, 2011
“Did you know there's a place in Menlo Park near the Safeway that has a 27 food rating?” one of my friends asked me that about two years ago, and I was struck because I immediately knew what it meant. Food rating... 30 point scale... Zagat. And the place... had to be good. With no other context, I instantly recognized and trusted Zagat's review and recommendation.
So, today, I'm thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.
With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry. Founded by Tim and Nina Zagat more than 32 years ago, Zagat has established a trusted and well-loved brand the world over, operating in 13 categories and more than 100 cities. The Zagats have demonstrated their ability to innovate and to do so with tremendous insight. Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed. Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and “snippeting” sentiment were “mobile” before “mobile” involved electronics. Today, Zagat provides people with a democratized, authentic and comprehensive view of where to eat, drink, stay, shop and play worldwide based on millions of reviews and ratings.
For all of these reasons, I'm incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users.
(BTW, Kaygetsu, the place in Menlo Park, definitely lives up to its 27 food rating!)
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Local, Maps and Location Services
Helping publishers get the most from display advertising with Admeld
June 13, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
DoubleClick Publisher Blog
)
It’s now clear that investments in new technologies, new ad formats and improved buying and selling processes are helping to grow the
display advertising
pie. This benefits publishers who make more money from display ads, users who receive free ad-funded content and marketers who are able to grow their businesses online.
However, we often hear from major website publishers that ad management today is still mind-numbingly
complicated and inefficient
. We’ve been investing in our publisher tools to try and improve this landscape and have made great progress, but we think we can do even better. To help major publishers get the most out of the rapidly changing and growing display ad landscape, we’ve signed an agreement to acquire
Admeld
, a New York-based yield optimization firm.
Here’s a basic summary of the
display ad industry
, from the perspective of major publishers. There are lots of different ways that they can sell their display ad space. Often, they’ll sell space
directly
to advertisers or agencies, using an ad server to actually deliver and measure the ads (like Microsoft’s Atlas, AOL’s AdTech, DoubleClick's DFP, Yahoo’s APT, OpenX, Zedo, 24/7 Real Media and others). Alternatively, they’ll make their ad space available
indirectly
—to hundreds of ad networks (like Advertising.com, Specific Media, Collective, 24/7, ValueClick, Vibrant, AdSense, Undertone and others), each with thousands of advertisers, or to various advertising exchanges or technology platforms (like Yahoo’s Right Media, OpenX, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, ContextWeb, AdBrite, AppNexus and others) that match them with ad buyers (like ad networks and demand side platforms) who represent advertisers, in real-time marketplaces.
Some publishers also work with a “yield optimization” provider (such as Rubicon Project, Pubmatic and others) that supplies technology to select ads from across these many indirect options, while providing personalized service and support. In a very complex and rapidly growing display ad landscape, that’s what Admeld does.
Providing better ad management services to publishers is an area that has seen a
huge
amount
of
investment
in
recent
months
. Formed just over three years ago, the Admeld team is an example of the huge strides the industry is making—it has quickly developed a great service that is helping many major publishers manage their ad space more efficiently and profitably.
By combining Admeld’s services, expertise and technology with Google’s offerings, we’re investing in what we hope will be an improved era of flexible ad management tools for major publishers. Together with Admeld, we hope to make display advertising simpler, more efficient and more valuable, provide improved support and services, and enable publishers to make more informed decisions across all their ad space. These are all things our publisher partners have been asking us to further invest in. Of course, Admeld will continue to support other ad networks, demand side platforms, exchanges and ad servers, to yield the best possible results for publishers.
We believe that this investment will be an important step to help online publishers, and will further improve and grow the display advertising industry as a whole.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising
ITA Software acquisition cleared for takeoff
April 8, 2011
How cool would it be if you could type "flights to somewhere sunny for under $500 in May" into Google and get not just a set of links but also flight times, fares and a link to sites where you can actually buy tickets quickly and easily? Well that's exactly why we announced our intention to
buy ITA Software
, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that specializes in organizing airline data last July—and we're excited that the U.S. Department of Justice today
approved
our acquisition.
It’s important to us that ITA continue with business as usual, providing great service to its business partners. We indicated
last July
that we would honor ITA’s existing contracts. Today we’ve formally committed to let ITA’s customers extend their contracts into 2016. We've also agreed to let both current and new customers license ITA’s QPX software on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” into 2016—along with
related commitments
aimed at making ITA’s technology available to other travel sites.
We’re moving to close this acquisition as soon as possible, and then we’ll start the important work of bringing our teams and products together. We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology we’ll be able to develop exciting new flight search tools for all our users. Up, up and away!
Update
April 12, 2011:
Our acquisition of ITA has now closed.
Posted by Jeff Huber, Senior Vice President, Commerce and Local
On demand is in demand: we’ve agreed to acquire Widevine
December 3, 2010
With rapidly improving broadband and wireless speeds, more powerful smartphones, and higher resolution screens on devices of all shapes and sizes, it’s becoming easier than ever to watch video wherever you want, whenever you want. And while it’s still fun to pull an old movie off the shelf and throw it in the DVD player, streaming is rapidly becoming the standard way for you to find the content you want to watch now. We’ve seen this on YouTube—where we get over 2 billion views every day—but it’s much bigger than that, as proven by the increasing popularity of movie subscription services and tablets.
Content creators and distributors are making huge strides in bringing us content in this way, but to do so, many require high-quality video and audio, secure delivery, and other content protection and video optimization technologies. With these tools in place they can easily and effectively give you access to the rich library of content you want to watch, with the immediacy you’ve come to expect.
So we’re pleased to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire
Widevine
. The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices. By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, Widevine has made on demand services more efficient and secure for media companies, and ultimately more available and convenient for users.
We are committed to maintaining Widevine’s agreements and will provide direct, quality support for their existing and future clients—and we plan to build upon Widevine’s technology to enhance both their products and our own. We’re excited to welcome the Widevine team to Google, and together we’ll work to improve access to great video content across the web.
Posted by Mario Queiroz, VP of Product Management
Can we talk? Better speech technology with Phonetic Arts
December 3, 2010
In Star Trek, they don’t spend a lot of time typing things on keyboards—they just speak to their computers, and the computers speak back. It’s a more natural way to communicate, but getting there requires chipping away at a range of hard research problems. We’ve recently made some strides with speech technologies and tools that take voice
input
: for example, we launched
Voice Search
,
Voice Input
and
Voice Actions
for mobile phones, allowing you to speak web searches, compose emails by voice, ask your phone to play any song, and more. And last year we started
automatically transcribing speech to produce captions
on YouTube videos.
But what about when the computer speaks to you—in other words, voice
output
? There are already places you can hear this in action today—for example, Google Translate
“speaks” translated text in multiple languages
, and you can
listen to navigation instructions
as you drive—but there’s still a lot to do. That’s why we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired
Phonetic Arts
, a speech synthesis company based in Cambridge, England. Phonetic Arts’ team of researchers and engineers work at the cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice.
There’s a
particular focus
right now in the U.K. on technology and innovation, and we’re delighted to be deepening our investment in the country with this acquisition. We already have a strong engineering center in London and look forward to welcoming Phonetic Arts to the team. We are excited about their technology, and while we don’t have plans to share yet, we’re confident that together we’ll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future.
Posted by Mike Cohen, Manager, Speech Technology
Google and Slide: building a more social web
August 6, 2010
We’re excited to announce we’ve acquired
Slide
, a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.
For Google, the web is about people, and we’re working to develop open, transparent and interesting (and fun!) ways to allow our users to take full advantage of how technology can bring them closer to friends and family and provide useful information just for
them
.
Slide has already created compelling social experiences for tens of millions of people across many platforms, and we’ve already built strong social elements into products like Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Picasa and YouTube. As the Slide team joins Google, we’ll be investing even more to make Google services socially aware and expand these capabilities for our users across the web.
While we don’t have any detailed product plans to share right now, we’re thrilled to welcome Max and his very talented team to Google, and we can’t wait to work together to give people more and better tools to communicate and connect.
Posted by David Glazer, Engineering Director
Deeper understanding with Metaweb
July 16, 2010
Over time we’ve improved search by deepening our understanding of queries and web pages. The web isn’t merely words—it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly. Today, we’ve acquired
Metaweb
, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone.
With efforts like
rich snippets
and the
search answers feature
, we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better. Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.
In addition to our ideas for search, we’re also excited about the possibilities for
Freebase
, Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more. Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users.
We look forward to working with the talented Metaweb team. We’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months. In the meantime, if you’re interested to learn more about Metaweb’s technology, we encourage you to read
their post
and do check out the helpful video there.
Posted by Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management
Taking off with ITA
July 1, 2010
Today, almost half of all airline tickets are sold online. But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience; pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options. We’d like to make that search much easier, which is why I’m pleased to announce that today we have signed an agreement to
acquire ITA
, a Boston-based software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.
While online flight search is rapidly evolving, we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers, books and geographic data. Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.
We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise as the leading developer of flight information software with Google’s technology we’ll be able to create great user innovations in flight search. ITA has built a very successful QPX business, and we're looking forward to working with their current and future customers. Google will honor all existing agreements, and we're also enthusiastic about adding new partners. You can read more about this deal
here
, and we’ll keep everybody up to date as we work to close this exciting acquisition.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience
We’ve officially acquired AdMob!
May 27, 2010
Last Friday,
we said
that mobile advertising was moving fast. So are we! Today, we closed our acquisition of AdMob. Omar Hamoui has built a great team and great products at AdMob and we’re thrilled to officially welcome them to Google.
We’ll now begin the process of bringing our products and teams together in the best way, and building new products and features together. We’re working to make this integration happen as fast and as seamlessly as possible. We’ll actively keep our clients up-to-date as we bring our businesses together — stay tuned!
It’s clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients’ and partners’ strategies and with this acquisition, it’s now a central part of our own business. In continuing to invest in this highly competitive area, we’ll be bringing together our technology, resources and expertise in search advertising with AdMob’s innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications.
Mobile search is central
One of the key ways that people find and access information on their mobile devices, just like on the desktop, is through search. As smart phones have proliferated, we’ve seen dramatic increases in mobile search volume. Over the past two years, Google's mobile search volumes have grown more than fivefold, at an accelerated pace. In the first three months of 2010, people with smartphones with “full” WebKit browsers (such as the iPhones, Android devices and Palm Pre) searched 62 percent more than they did in the previous three months.
Increasingly, people aren’t just typing search queries into their mobile devices. They
speak
them, they
take photos
of them and they even
translate
them from different languages.
In addition to traditional search ads on mobile devices, we’ve worked to develop entirely new search ad formats. “
Click-to-call” search ads
, for example, have been really popular. They enable advertisers to include a local business or national phone number directly in their ad text that you can click to reach the business directly via phone. This is a really great way for you to easily get information from a relevant business (say, a local restaurant), and a highly effective way for advertisers to connect with interested customers.
With many more advances to come, search advertising will remain the central way that many businesses connect with consumers on mobile devices.
Mobile websites and apps
In addition to search, another key way that people access information is through mobile websites (accessed through a browser) and mobile apps (available through Apple’s App Store, the Android Marketplace and more).
Mobile display and text ads make it easy for publishers and developers to make money from their mobile websites and apps, and enable advertisers to extend the reach of their campaigns to relevant mobile content. In this area, AdMob has been a real pioneer and has innovated at a tremendous pace, building a successful business and working with thousands of advertisers, publishers and developers.
AdMob was one of the first companies to serve ads inside mobile applications on the Android and iPhone platforms. They’ve developed a host of engaging and creative ad units for Android and iPhone apps—for example,
interactive video ad units
and
expandable rich media ads
. Google has also been developing new features for in-app ads. For example, last week, we
announced
that we’ll be making “click-to-call” ad formats available to developers who run AdSense in their mobile apps. With Google and AdMob starting to work together, there’s lots more innovation to come in this area.
The future
It’s clear that mobile advertising is growing incredibly fast with lots of businesses innovating at great speed. Every day, more marketers are looking to take advantage of the mobile-specific capabilities, extended reach, great returns and value that mobile advertising provides. Advertisers are now starting to see mobile as an essential part of their overall campaigns, not just a silo-ed experiment on the side.
We want to unleash agencies’ and advertisers’ creativity on all mobile devices and deliver them better results from their campaigns, drive better returns and more choice for publishers and developers, and help people get better ads and more free mobile content.
We believe that mobile advertising can play a significant role in every single marketing campaign. We’re passionate about the unlimited possibilities in this space. Today, with AdMob, our work to make them a reality begins.
Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management
Stock Repurchase
As previously announced, Google intends to repurchase in the open market a number of shares equal to the number of shares issued in the transaction and issuable upon exercise of outstanding options to purchase common stock issued by AdMob. The repurchase program is expected to commence shortly after the completion of the acquisition. The repurchases will be funded from available working capital.
Google welcomes Picnik
March 1, 2010
(Cross-posted from the
Google Photos Blog
)
More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we're excited to announce that
Google has acquired Picnik
, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using
Picnik
, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.
We're not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we'll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we'd like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.
We're very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they've created, and we're excited to welcome them to Google. We're looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!
Posted by Brian Axe, Product Management Director
Google acquires Aardvark
February 12, 2010
When you need an answer to a very specific question, sometimes the information just isn't online in one simple place. For example, let's say you want to know if there's snow on Skyline Boulevard on a given day or the best time of year to plant beans in the Bay Area. You might find weather reports and planting guides on many different sites, but for these kinds of questions, a person with the right expertise can be a lot more useful than a webpage.
That's why we're excited to announce that
we've acquired Aardvark
, a unique technology company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts. Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they're about and then matches each question to people with relevant knowledge and interests to give you an answer quickly.
We're very impressed with the Aardvark team and the technology they've worked hard to build, and we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. You can learn more about Aardvark's underlying technology and premise by reading this
paper
recently co-authored by founder Damon Horowitz.
In the meantime, Aardvark is available today in
Google Labs
, so give it try!
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search
Displaying the best display ad with Teracent
November 23, 2009
Can you spot the difference between these two sample display ads? Of course you can. However, the most important difference is not discernible to the naked eye.
The lower ad was customized and chosen from thousands of different creative elements, automatically and in real-time, by machine-learning algorithms developed by
Teracent
, a San Mateo, California startup.
We think that this technology has great potential to improve display advertising on the web. That's why we're pleased to announce today that we've entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Teracent. The transaction, which is subject to various closing conditions, is expected to close this quarter.
As you know, we've been busy releasing
new
features
and
products
to help improve display advertising on the web for everyone. We believe that Teracent's technology fits neatly into these efforts.
Teracent's technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.
This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.
We're looking forward to welcoming the Teracent team to Google and to making this technology available to our display advertising clients — including those who run display ad campaigns on the Google Content Network and our DoubleClick clients.
Update
on 12/11/2009: The deal has closed, and Teracent is officially part of Google.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Product Management and Joerg Heilig, Engineering Director
Investing in a mobile future with AdMob
November 9, 2009
We're happy to announce today that we have signed an agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display advertising company based in San Mateo, CA. AdMob is a great Silicon Valley story — founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui when he couldn't find good ways to generate traffic for his mobile site. Over the past few years, Omar and his talented team have built a thriving company with great mobile advertising products, and we are looking forward to having them join the Google team and work with us on the future of mobile advertising.
We've written in the
past
about how mobile phones are becoming an increasingly indispensable part of our daily lives, and we continue to see how great devices with full Internet browsers and vibrant app marketplaces are driving an explosion of usage. In fact:
iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [
Morgan Stanley
], contributing to Google's 5x mobile search growth over the past two years
And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [
AdMob
]
Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal.
For publishers of mobile websites and applications, this deal will mean better products and tools and more effective monetization of their content — allowing them to focus more on their users and less on how to generate revenue.
For advertisers who want to reach users when they are engaged with mobile content, this deal will bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. It will also mean more interesting, engaging ad formats.
Last, but certainly not least, we believe users will benefit from this deal — through more mobile content and through better mobile ads that deliver useful information. And that's good for all of us. For more information, check out
this site
that we've set up about the deal.
Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management and Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering
Innovation in video on the web
August 5, 2009
Today, video is an important part of many people's everyday activities on the Internet and a big part of many Google products.
Because we spend a lot of time working to make the overall web experience better for users, we think that video compression technology should be a part of the web platform. To that end, we're happy to
announce today
that we've signed a deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a leading creator of high-quality video compression technology.
The deal is still subject to approval by On2 Technologies' stockholders and review by relevant regulatory authorities, including the SEC, but we expect it to close in Q4.
Although we're not in a position to discuss specific product plans until after the deal closes, we are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2 Technologies' team and technology will help us further that goal.
We'll update everybody when we're able to share more information. In the meantime, nothing will change for On2 Technologies' current and prospective customers.
Update
on Feb 19, 2010:
On2
has been acquired
by Google.
Posted by Jeremy Doig, Engineering Director - Video, and Mike Jazayeri, Group Product Manager
Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This document includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the expected timing of the acquisition, Google’s and On2’s ability to close the acquisition, Google’s ability to integrate On2’s technology and employees, and the expected benefits of the acquisition, including that the acquisition will further Google’s goal to enhance the web experience with video. These statements are based on the current expectations or beliefs of managements of Google Inc. and On2 Technologies, Inc., and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the statements herein due to (1) changes in economic, business, competitive, technological and/or regulatory factors, (2) failure to receive the required stockholder and regulatory approval for the acquisition, (3) failure to compete successfully in this highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, (4) failure to retain key employees, and (5) other factors affecting the operation of the respective businesses of Google and On2. More detailed information about these and other factors that may affect current expectations may be found in filings by Google or On2, as applicable, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including their respective most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Google and On2 are under no obligation to, and expressly disclaim any such obligation to, update or alter their respective forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Additional Information and Where to Find It
Google plans to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission a Registration Statement on Form S-4 in connection with the transaction, which will include a Proxy Statement of On2 that also constitutes a Prospectus of Google. On2 will mail the Proxy Statement/Prospectus to its stockholders in connection with the transaction. The Registration Statement and the Proxy Statement/Prospectus will contain important information about Google, On2, the transaction and related matters. Investors and security holders are urged to read the Registration Statement and the Proxy Statement/Prospectus carefully when they are available. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the Registration Statement and the Proxy Statement/Prospectus and other documents filed with the SEC by Google and On2 through the web site maintained by the SEC at
www.sec.gov
and by contacting Google Investor Relations at 650-253-7663 or On2 Investor Relations at 518-881-4299. In addition, investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC on Google’s website at
investor.google.com
and on On2’s website at
www.on2.com
.
Participants in the Solicitation
Google, On2 and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in respect of the proposed transaction. Information regarding Google’s executive officers and directors is included in Google’s definitive proxy statement, which was filed with the SEC on March 24, 2009, and information regarding On2’s executive officers and directors is included in On2’s definitive proxy statement, which was filed with the SEC on April 7, 2009. The Proxy Statement / Prospectus for the proposed transaction will provide more information about participants in the solicitation of proxies from On2 stockholders, which participants may have interests different from On2 stockholders generally. You can obtain free copies of these documents from Google or On2 using the contact information above.
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