Making Google Australia a great place to work

Innovation and user focus are a core part of Google Australia's philosophy and our team strives to keep up with the high standards set by our technical and sales colleagues. We try to create the best possible workplace, so that all our Australian employees can be productive and passionate at work. Whether it's "20% time" for our Australian engineers to work on new projects, creating a flat culture of "open doors and open debate", or ping-pong tournaments against media agencies, we believe that the right work environment leads to great work, which benefits our Australian users and partners.

So, we're thrilled that the Great Place to Work™ Australia Institute and BRW Magazine have put us at Number 1 on the list of Great Places to Work in Australia.

You may not know, but our Australian office started in a Sydney lounge room in 2002! Since those beginnings, we've invested in our Australian operations very substantially and now have nearly 350 employees in our Sydney headquarters.

A question we get asked quite a bit - "are you still hiring"? The answer is "yes". You can find out more about what it's like to work at Google and see jobs that are open in Australia here. We're looking for software engineers to work in Sydney on global products like Google Maps, and various other online applications. We also have positions on our sales teams, as more and more Australian businesses are turning to the Internet as a cost-effective way to market and grow their businesses in tough economic times.

Posted by Siobhan Lyndon and Sara Ramstrom, People Operations

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Google Australia business stimulus offer

Owner of Australian mobile coffee cart business Cafe in a Box, Michael Wilcocks, has said: "For every $1 I spend on Google AdWords I've received at least $50 in sales. It's been the best investment I've made. My customer base has grown 85% due to online advertising."

Sound good? We think so.

At Google, we want to help propel the Australian digital economy. Encouraging more Australian businesses to connect with customers online is a major part of that vision.

In the current economic climate, more Australians than ever before are heading online to research products and services, with search engines central to online navigation, research and comparison shopping.

We're today announcing a business stimulus offer, to help Australia's 1.88m small and medium-sized enterprises speed up in the economic slowdown. We're offering a free $75 search marketing campaign, to help Australian businesses reach new customers and drive sales.

Thousands of businesses are already embracing the benefits of measurable, cost-effective and targeted advertising programs such as Google AdWords. Those who have not yet dipped their toes in the AdWords water can take advantage of our $75 stimulus offer at google.com.au/stimulus.

Even if you're a small business that doesn't have an e-commerce platform on your site, you can benefit from this offer. Research shows that many Australians are doing their research online and then heading in-store to buy - for example, Monash's Australian Centre for Retail Studies has found that 50 per cent of Australian shoppers research their retail purchases online before they get to the store to buy.

For existing AdWords advertisers, we're offering two special master classes to help you improve the performance of your search marketing campaigns. A select number of existing advertisers that attend the seminars will receive a free, tailored campaign "optimisation" from a Google expert to drive better results and increased sales.

We hope lots of Australian small businesses will take up today's offer and learn how easy it is to use the web to grow their businesses.

Posted by Julian Persaud, Head of Online, Google Australia

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We want to hear from you!

Over the years we've learned that some of the best insight into Blogger comes from you guys, the millions of users who use it every day. So we thought it'd be a great idea to open up the floor for feedback, and provide an easy way to let us know what you'd like to see.

With the help of Product Ideas, we've created a forum which allows you to submit and vote on new feature suggestions, gadget recommendations, and even Blogs of Note! The more feedback we get the better, so please take a moment to check it out, and then tell your friends.

We'll be keeping a close eye on all of the responses, so please stay tuned! We'll keep the forum open until Friday, May 14th.

The fine print: All support issues should still be directed to the help group. Off-topic submissions may be removed by the team. And Blogs of Note is for Blogger blogs only ;-)

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@googledownunder on the Twitter train

If you're a Twitter user, you can get even more news from Google Australia by following our updates here.

We will, of course, continue to blog, but keep an eye on Twitter for tweets about upcoming events, news from Google Australia and around the world, and other technology-related bits and pieces we think you might find interesting.

And if you like what we have to say, try following Google's other Twitter feeds - @google, @googleatwork, and @adsense to name a few.

See you there!

Posted by Annie Baxter and Lucinda Barlow, Google Australia communications team

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Google App Engine Features Launch and Developer Event

Last week, the Google App Engine team held a Campfire in Mountain View to celebrate their first birthday and announce several new and useful App Engine features. We introduced support for Java and other JVM-compatible languages, cron jobs, database import, and access to secure firewalled data. Several of our Sydney engineers were heavily involved in this launch: Anthony Baxter was the lead engineer on the cron jobs feature and our other engineers worked on the integration with Google Apps. The photo below shows some of the team, proudly wearing their App Engine t-shirts.


To celebrate the launch here in Sydney and to kickstart developers using the new features, we're holding a special developer event on the evening of April 27th with talks from our pictured Sydney engineers. More information and a registration link for the event is available on our Google Developer Events Sydney site. Sign up quickly as space is limited. While you're there, why not also sign up for our mailing list to find out about upcoming developer events? Hope to see you at one soon.

Posted by Pamela Fox, Google Developer Programs Engineer

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Online publishers: Attend the Ad Manager webinar

We're committed to helping Australian publishers make money from their content, through a number of programs including AdSense and related advertising tools. A little over a year ago, we announced the beta release of our ad serving and management solution, Google Ad Manager. As a hosted ad management tool for publishers selling ads directly on their sites, it helps to sell, schedule, deliver and measure all directly-sold and network-based inventory. Over the past year, Google Ad Manager has helped our publisher partners from all over the world to increase revenue, cut serving costs and save time managing ad campaigns.

We're excited to announce the first Google Ad Manager webinar specifically for publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The webinar will be an introduction to Ad Manager for those wanting to learn more about how the technology can help optimise their advertising revenue, and will feature a live demo.

Special features of Ad Manager include its simple user interface, the ability to forecast inventory availability and the option to consistently deliver the best ad by enabling integration with AdSense.

The web seminar will be held live on Wednesday, 22nd April. Interested publishers can register for the one-hour event here.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Carrol Lapsys, Business Development team

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Post On The Go

Our newest graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground improves the experience of blogging on the go. In this release, we've updated the Dashboard to simplify setting up email and mobile posting for your blogs.

Enabling mobile posting is a great way to open up your blog to all sorts of instantaneous, real-world updates from wherever you find yourself. Stumble across something awesome that you want to share with the world right away? Snap a perfect picture on your phone that would be great addition to your photo blog? Our new mobile service supports SMS, MMS, and email posting, so there are plenty of options for 'mobilizing' your blog.

To set up SMS or MMS posting, simply click the phone icon next to a specific blog from your dashboard.


We'll then show you a claim code, which you can send to BLOGGR (256447) via SMS (or go@blogger.com via MMS) to associate the blog to your device. (At the moment, SMS posting is only available in the US.)

To set up email posting, simply click the envelope icon next to a specific blog from your dashboard. You'll then be prompted to create a secret email address for your blog. Emails sent to this address will be posted to your blog, and photo attachments will be inserted between the post's title and body.

iPhone tip: SMS does not support photos, and the iPhone does not support MMS. To post pictures from your iPhone to your blog, set up email posting and email the photos to your blog's secret email address. (For help on setting up email on your iPhone, see Apple's "Email account setup" help article.)

You can even create a blog directly from your mobile device, by following the instructions outlined here. You will be able to claim it later once you are back at your computer.

So go ahead and take your blog on the go, and if you run across something cool, please tell us about it!

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Monetize!

You may have noticed that about a week ago a new tab showed up in Blogger for your blog. The tab is called Monetize, and in case it isn't clear what that means: it's now easier than ever to make money with your blog! (There's also a "Monetize" link from your Dashboard as well.)

The current Monetize tab allows you to apply for an AdSense account (or link your Blogger blog to an existing AdSense account). You can then choose where to place ads on your blog, and once ads start appearing on your blog, review your earnings. We use the AdSense API to pull your live earnings data from your AdSense account, so now it's easy to check how your revenues are doing without leaving the Blogger interface.

Please note that new applications may take a few days to process, and not every site will be approved (for more on the eligibility criteria for an AdSense account, please see here). Details about the monetize tab and the information presented there is available in Blogger's Help section.

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Scholarships for women studying ICT

Supporting the communities in which we work has always been important to Googlers. Consequently we’re happy to announce that applications are now open for the 4th annual Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Scholarship.

We've simplified the application process this year, and it will remain open until June 1, 2009. Scholars and finalists will be selected on the basis of their academic strength, demonstrated leadership and community involvement. Scholars also receive a financial stipend.

In addition, we invite all finalists and scholars to an all-expenses paid networking retreat in our engineering centre in Sydney. The retreat provides an opportunity for students to connect; form friendships; discuss new technologies, opportunities and challenges; and participate in fun activities with their peers and industry professionals. Over the past three years, we've hosted close to 50 finalists and scholars studying computer science and related technical fields from 20 different Australian and New Zealand universities. We’ve been pleased to see the community grow year on year, with past alumni establishing student and industry networking groups in their home states, organising state-wide events for girls at high school, and becoming emerging leaders in industry and academia.

Check out the profiles of last year's scholars and finalists to find out which ones might be similar to you.

Applications close June 1, 2009. For complete details, please visit www.google.com.au/anitaborg.

As ever we look forward to expanding the scholarship, so please feel free to share details with others who might be interested!

Will Blott, Talent & Outreach Programs Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand

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