Talking About Privacy at Parliament

We headed to Canberra today to talk to the Senate’s Standing Committee on Environment and Communications about online privacy. The Committee is looking at protections for the privacy of Australians online, and we thought it would be useful for us to appear and explain Google’s approach to protecting our users’ privacy. We lodged a submission in August (which you can read here) and presented to the Committee in a hearing this morning.

According to Nielsen, Australians are spending a lot of time online — 86% of Australians have access to the Internet and Internet users aged 16-29 years spent an average of 22 hours online per week. They’re taking advantage of the Internet’s ability to offer greater convenience (such as online banking and bill payment), easier communication with friends and family (such as on email, chat, and photo and video sharing sites), and better access to an entire world of information that would previously have been difficult or impossible to get your hands on. Five or ten years from now there will undoubtedly be even more “must have” online services that we can’t predict today.

At Google, we take privacy very seriously. We are very aware of the trust that users have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect their privacy and data. Without our users’ trust, we have nothing; after all, on the web, competition is only a click away. We have a set of privacy principles that help guide the decisions we make at every level of our company and at every stage of product design which put users in control through transparency and choice.

Here are some examples of what this means in practice. Our Privacy Centre educates users about how to make more informed choices about which products they use, how to use them, and what information they provide to us — and we work hard to keep this site free of tech jargon and legal-speak! We built the Google Dashboard to give you a clear picture of the information you store with Google and quick links to control your personal settings for more than 20 products. We’ve made it easier to move data in and out of Google products with our Data Liberation Front, and you can control the ads you see using our Ads Preferences Manager.

Another key element of good privacy practice is security — meaning, how we keep our systems and your data safe. We invest heavily in security, and it’s at the core of our design and development process. We use automated tools and manual review to help keep our products and services secure, and if a compromise is suspected, we take swift action to protect our users’ information.

Google is committed to empowering Australians to be in control online. With the right information and the right tools, users can make the most of the Internet and the opportunities it brings to every doorstep.

Ishtar Vij, Public Policy and Government Affairs Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand

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Safe Browsing on Blogger

National Cyber-Security Awareness Month is here once again. In that spirit we wanted to share a bit about what we are doing on Blogger to help fight malicious content, along with some tips for a safer browsing experience online. While spammers are always coming up with new tricks, the combination of Blogger’s abuse-fighting systems and the security features of modern browsers helps ensure that you’ll be able to browse through your favorite blog content with confidence.

We’ve partnered with other abuse-fighting teams within Google to develop sophisticated systems for automatically detecting and quarantining nefarious content on Blogspot. Over the years, our teams have analyzed the patterns and behavior of malicious blogs and code, and with each new detection our existing algorithms are trained for better coverage in the future. As a result, we are able to catch and quarantine thousands of malicious blogs each year, and are happy to say that our overall spam levels are at an all-time low across our service.

Of course, while our automated systems provide great coverage for a wide variety of abuse types, you can always let us know about suspicious blogs by reporting them directly to us via our online form. We’re also looking to you, the users, to be our eyes on the web and let us know anything that may have escaped our existing systems.

Beyond partnering with us on the detection process, you can also make a difference in your own online security by taking advantage of your browser’s built-in security. Modern browsers have powerful security features that can detect potentially malicious sites and alert you should you stumble upon them. Using technology like Google’s Safe Browsing tools, users of many browsers see warning screens when attempting to visit sites that automated systems have determined to contain suspicious content. To make sure you have the latest and most secure browser version, please check out the following browser sites:

We also recommend using one of the following tools to keep your browser plug-ins up to date: Google-developed SecBrowsing; Mozilla Plugin Check.

For more tips on safe browsing and security on the web, check out the home of Cyber Security Awareness Month at the http://staysafeonline.org/.


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Business Photos from Google are now on Place pages

Six months ago, we announced the pilot of a project to take photos of business interiors. Through this program, business owners located in the U.S., Australia and Japan could invite our photographers into their establishments to take high-quality images of their businesses. Excitement from interested business owners grew quickly, and we’ve since taken photos of businesses in about 30 cities.

Starting today, the images we’ve taken as part of the pilot can be viewed on the Place pagesof participating businesses. Users and potential customers who look online for local businesses can now see more high-quality photos that give them a sense of what a place is really like. The photos may include the storefront, decor, layout, merchandise, food, signage about hours and accepted payment types, and other items that help people learn more about a business and decide if they want to go there. For example, if you’re looking for the perfect restaurant to make a good impression on a first date, the high-quality interior photos might help you decide if the ambiance and atmosphere of a particular place are right for the occasion you’re planning.

Here are a few examples of these high-resolution photos:


Susan Avery Flowers and Event Styling, a wedding services, event planning and florist shop in Sydney, Australia

法善寺横丁　正弁丹吾亭, or Shoben Tango Tei, an authentic Japanese restaurant in Osaka, Japan


Pane e Vino, an award-winning Italian Restaurant in San Francisco, CA

Business owners who worked directly with our photographers across these three regions will see the photos from Google on their Place page within the coming weeks. Thanks to all of you who welcomed us into your businesses. We’re continuing to take photos at more business locations, and urge others to let us know if you’d like us to visit you as well.

In the meantime, you can also upload your own photos and videos of your business by signing in to Google Places. By building out your Place page with visuals and other relevant business information - such as hours of operation, offers and more - you’ll help potential customers learn more about you and feel like they know what to expect when they actually walk through your doors.

Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager


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YouTube Play Winners Announced

YouTube Play searched for the world’s most creative art videos and after 23,000 submissions and 125 finalists, we’re excited to announce that the 25 winners have been announced overnight in New York at a special celebratory event at the Guggenheim Museum. Two Australian entries were among the winning 25: Keith Loutit's tilt-shift/time-lapse piece entitled 'Bathtub IV' and Nick Bertke's 'Gardyn'. Australian singer Megan Washington, who features as the singer in 'Bathtub IV', also performed live at the event in New York.




The winning entries will have their videos projected onto the Guggenheim Museum, and the final videos will also be on display from 22nd-24th October in the Museum. You can see the entries at the Play website.

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Team

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A note on Google search results

From time to time we receive requests from people who would like to see a given website removed from our search results. This goes to the very core of how we view web search, so we wanted to shed more light on how we approach requests of this nature.

First, there is a subtle but very important distinction between Google’s search results and the web itself. When you type a query into Google, you are not searching the web directly, but rather our copy of the web, also called an ‘index’. To help people find whatever they may be looking for, we work very hard to ensure that our index is a comprehensive and accurate reflection of the world’s online information.

The comprehensiveness of our search index is also fundamental to our belief that the Internet provides an incredible opportunity to express ideas, share information, and communicate openly. While not every view expressed online is palatable to all of us, we believe that the Internet should remain an open platform for a diversity of opinions, whether we agree with them or not.

That said, we will remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines. This most often happens when a website uses unfair methods to try to appear higher in the search rankings, such as cloaking text so it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines and manipulating search engine results. When this happens, a webmaster can fix the site to meet our guidelines and then ask for re-inclusion. We will also remove a site from our search results at the request of that site’s webmaster.

In addition, we will remove individual search results if we believe we are required to do so by applicable law--one well-known example is Germany, where Nazi content is illegal. We are transparent about this process and provide notice in our search results when we have removed URLs in response to a legal request. In their place is a link to chillingeffects.org, which catalogues these removals as well as the legal ground for the removal, e.g. a court decision or a decision by a governmental authority. Anyone can request this type of removal by contacting us. Note that we receive many of these requests -- some part of valid legal process, some not -- so we do take time to evaluate each request.

In all of these cases, it’s important to remember that removing a result from Google Search is not the same as deleting that site. Google is not, and should not become, an arbiter of what does or does not appear on the web, which is why we strive to protect the integrity of our search results. If search results were altered regularly according to individual preferences, whether they are those of Google or of the general public, there would be a risk that different voices on the web, from all walks of life, could be silenced.

Posted by Annie Baxter, Google corporate communications

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Back from BlogWorld

Sometimes returning to a nice, quiet office can be just what the doctor ordered after an exhausting trip away. And for the handful of us on the Blogger Team who just returned from BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, this was definitely the case.

For the first time since the convention’s debut four years ago, we set up shop on the tradeshow floor with our very own Blogger-themed exhibit. Armed with demo stations, Blogger t-shirts and chip clips, and our very own bright red marshmallow couch, we spent our time showing off the latest features and talking to literally hundreds of folks about their experiences with Blogger. And we learned a lot.

shaun, vardhman, chang, antin, brett, and tina on the marshmallow couch.

The feedback that we got was both encouraging and enlightening, and we’re still in the process of digesting everything. First, we want to thank everyone who came by the booth to say hello, test out the new features, spend a few minutes getting interviewed, or to tell us what we could be doing better. Having so many passionate bloggers in one place to interact with was an incredible resource, from the gentleman we spoke with who has been blogging since 1995 to the fitness blogger who set up her first Blogger blog right in front of us. So once again, thanks for sharing!


demoing with the guys from vanilla. photo credit: brendan sera-shriar
We’re excited about what’s in store for Blogger in the coming months, and after this trip we’re even more committed to delivering the best blog service possible. In the spirit of keeping the conversations going, feel free to send us a tweet or post on our wall if something’s on your mind. Or, if you want to give us some more detailed feedback, please let us know on our Product Ideas page.


Finally, we want to thank Rick Calvert for reaching out and encouraging us to be a part of BlogWorld Expo. We hope to see you all next year!



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The opportunities of the NBN



Port Augusta, in my home state of South Australia, is staring down the detractors of rural and regional Australia.

It's a town with a fascinating history as a crossroads in our vast country, connecting West to East and back again. In 1917, Port Augusta was the beneficiary of the pre-Federation promise to the West Australians of a Trans-Australian Railway. The railway physically connected Perth, through Kalgoorlie, to Adelaide, providing new opportunities for businesses and individuals to prosper. This was a visionary project: a nation-building venture.

Nearly a century later, and Port Augusta is again the beneficiary of a nation-building venture. The town will again be linked to Australia and the world through inclusion in the National Broadband Network's fibre optic coverage plans.

Being a major hub for telecommunications networks has served Port Augusta, its people and its economy well; unlike many rural and regional towns across the country, Port Augusta's population has grown by almost 7 per cent since 2001. The impact of better services through the delivery of super-fast broadband to the town will cement Port Augusta's achievements. The National Broadband Network will provide towns across Australia with new opportunities to grow.

At present, there is a lot of discussion about the implementation and construction of this vital infrastructure. This is appropriate given the significant taxpayer dollars involved.

But to borrow the words of my colleague Ian Birks of the Australian Information Industry Association, it's "the trains and not the tracks" that present the exciting opportunities.

Just as the trains of the Trans-Australian Railway linked the wheatfields of the Spencer Gulf to the gold mines of Kalgoorlie, and brought passengers through Port Augusta to the east, so too will a super-fast broadband network bring a freight train of innovation to our shores.

The National Broadband Network will be the digital equivalent of the Trans-Australian Railway: linking towns small and large, bringing new life and new opportunities to our economy and our communities.

And these innovations will be driven by users - by the Australian people who are seizing the opportunities online with gusto. More than 80 per cent of Australian homes are already connected to the internet; the National Broadband Network will provide more people across the country with access, and with improved services.

Thirty-seven years after radio came into being, it reached the milestone of 50 million users. Fifteen years after the advent of television it reached the same milestone. The world-wide web reached 50 million regular users after only three years, and it's now estimated that more than 200 million people come online across the globe each year.

As more people get online, users' needs, behaviours and expectations evolve.

How would a new bank fare in Australia today if it didn't provide online banking services? Where ten years ago we would have spent our lunch hour in a queue, we now expect to be able to avoid that hassle, to bank without leaving our desks or our living rooms.

Yet in Australia today, of the nearly two million small businesses who make up a staggering 96 per cent of all businesses, 39 percent do not have a website.

Meanwhile, four out of five Australians research products online; 45 per cent of Australian internet users publish their opinions about products, services and brands and a staggering 86 per cent read other consumers' opinions online. This represents a huge missed opportunity for businesses to find new customers and to participate in the expanding digital economy.

These businesses - plumbers, B&Bs, hairdressers - rely on the Yellow Pages and word of mouth to find new customers and to establish their reputation. Yet today's word of mouth is transmitted as often through Facebook or Twitter, as it is over a cup of tea. Today's users find businesses as often on Google Maps from a mobile phone as from a street directory.

With new and faster technology, our expectations are changing. Now, I expect to be able to search the restaurant I read a review about, call them from that page, and be able to find them on Google Maps. If my expectations aren't met, I may still turn up for dinner, but each expectation not met is a hurdle. And in a growing market which is becoming more competitive, Australian businesses don't need hurdles.

Access to the Internet across Australia today can be expensive and unreliable, particularly in regional areas. Yet we have seen Australian companies take advantage of opportunities to reach new markets both at home and abroad. Australian start-up companies like Atlassian and PC Tools have thrived because of the power of the Internet to reach customers around the world.

If we can get rid of the barriers to business through a super-fast broadband network, Aussie businesses right across the country will not only have the same opportunities as the rest of the world - but potentially a leg up as well. The access provided by the National Broadband Network means that the world is now our marketplace.

The evolution of users' expectations - and the users themselves - are driving innovation.

For example, currently we are witnessing the convergence of mobile and social trends online. These media were quick in the adaptation of their sites to mobile and these days it's hard to find a new phone without Facebook, YouTube and Twitter apps.

We are witnessing this trend, absolutely - but we're also the lead actors in pushing its development forward. Users are driving this bus.

And developers are rising to the challenge.

They are making the most of new technologies - every time our technology improves new things become possible. The openness of the internet is an environment built for innovation, and environment best equipped to meet - and to exceed - users' needs and expectations.

When four engineers in a Sydney suburb came up with the idea that became Google Maps, they needed a printer for those maps to be useful on the go.

Today, rather than dog-earring tattered street directories or print outs, we're pulling up Google Maps on our mobile phones.

Our behaviours have changed: we have evolved with the technology. But we've also driven innovation for greater usability, for personalisation, for a product that works for us.

We're seeing hassle-free upgrades to cloud-based web applications - do you even know or care what version of web mail you are using now? And high-speed broadband promises even greater capacity and new possibilities.

When the user is driving the bus, developers and companies need to respond to what the user wants. And what users want is services and devices that work for them - that adapt easily into their lives, and which improve their quality of being.

The opportunity before us in Australia is the acceleration of this exciting phenomenon. It's mobile phone convenience now - but it will be health, education, small business tomorrow. But more than acceleration - this is an opportunity for innovations we can't yet conceive of. And with the technology to support innovation, users will be in the driver's seat.

Nationwide access and affordability are critical to this, and competition for retail services through the National Broadband Network will be the essential enabler of innovation. Transparency in the delivery of services and devices is also important so that users can make the choices that are best for them. And our regulatory and policy settings must continue to place users at the centre.

We need to empower users to take their rightful place at the centre of this new revolution. We need to educate people, young and old, country and city, to be digital citizens, in the same way that we teach our kids to swim. We need to empower users to be safe online, to act smartly and responsibly - to have the knowledge and skills to take advantage of the opportunities in the online world and the know-how to deal with any risks.

Australia has an opportunity to be ahead of the game, to be in the driver's seat when it comes to innovation, to communication, and to facing and adapting to the challenges of the future.

Super-fast broadband gives us a platform - like the Trans-Australia Railway did - to connect to a new generation of opportunities.

Let's think about the possibilities. And take the opportunity to innovate.

Alan Noble

Originally posted at ABC Technology.


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More transparency and control over location

(Editor's note: This is a cross-post from the Official Google Blog)

We’ve always focused on offering people the most relevant results. Location is one important factor we’ve used for many years to customise the information that you find. For example, if you’re searching for great restaurants, you probably want to find ones near you, so we use location information to show you places nearby.

Today we’re moving your location setting to the left-hand panel of the results page to make it easier for you to see and control your preferences. With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location setting and make changes to it.











Your location setting is now always visible on the left side of the search results page.

We do our best to automatically detect the most useful location, but we don’t always get it right—so in some cases you’ll want to change the setting. At other times, you may want to change your location to explore information relevant to another area. For example, let’s say you’re at work in Mountain View and you’re making plans to see a movie in San Francisco (a common occurrence here at Google). You can change your location to “San Francisco” and search for [showtimes] to find movie listings in San Francisco or search for [restaurants] to find places to eat before the show. Similarly, if you’re planning a trip to Hawaii, you can change the location to “Honolulu” and start exploring the [weather], [hotels] and of course the [beaches]. The location you set can be as specific as a particular post code or as general as an entire country, but more specific settings generally lead to better search results.













Click “Change location” to specify your location preference.

You used to be able to see and control your location settings, but it was a little clunky. To see your settings, you could click “View customisations” on the results page and to modify them you could click “Change location” next to a variety of search results, such as maps and movie listings. As time has gone by, more and more locally relevant information has come online, whether it’s local business listings or a blog from your hometown. Meanwhile, Google has become much better at presenting this locally relevant content—so it felt like the right time to make this setting easier to find.

The new interface is rolling out now and will be available in more than 40 languages soon. We’re not changing anything about how we use location information to improve search, so it doesn’t change our existing privacy policies. To learn more about our new interface and how we use location in search, check out our help centre.

Posted by Mack Lu, Associate Product Manager

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YouTube Symphony Orchestra comes to Sydney Opera House!

We’ve just announced the return of YouTube Symphony Orchestra, an online audition for a collaborative orchestra on a global scale. What began with 3,000 YouTube submissions from concert calls, living rooms and dorms in 70 countries around the world culminated in YouTube bringing an orchestra of 96 musicians from over 30 countries to New York’s Carnegie Hall to perform a sell-out concert under the direction of San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

This time, we’re very excited to bring YouTube Symphony Orchestra down under to perform on March 20, 2011, in Australia’s very own Sydney Opera House. The performance will be live streamed on the world’s largest stage: YouTube. This ‘second act’ promises an even more innovative celebration than the first, bringing together music, technology, and global collaboration in an iconic venue of world class ideas and performances -- Sydney Opera House.



This morning we launched YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011, direct from the Utzon room at Sydney Opera House, with key partners Tourism Australia, Sydney Symphony, and other musical guests in attendance. The event featured performances from YouTube Australia sensation Aston, an inspired improvisational performance from William Barton, and a live hookup to last year’s host venue, Carnegie Hall in New York.













William Barton













Aston



We’re calling on musicians to audition for the opportunity to take part in YouTube Symphony Orchestra and perform at Sydney Opera House. If you play trumpet, banjo or didgeridoo, from Sydney to Tassie, Brisbane or Broome, we want to hear from you!

To be considered, upload audition videos of designated pieces to demonstrate your musical and technical abilities. This year, we’re also looking for solo improvisers to extend the audition process beyond classical instruments and performance. The online audition period opens October 13, 2010, and extends through to November 28, 2010.



Selected musicians will be flown to Sydney to participate in a week-long classical music summit with Michael Tilson Thomas and leading musical masters, culminating in a final performance on March 20, 2011, which will be live-streamed on YouTube.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 offers a further focus on musical education, and will offer online master classes with orchestras around the world, and classes for Australian musicians during the summit.

Last year, Australian violist and YouTube Symphony Orchestra winner Lauren Brigden travelled to Carnegie Hall. Hear her experience:



Get ready to play your part. We look forward to welcoming you down under!

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Australia, recently watched Aston Music, Laroux - Bulletproof, Classical Cover.




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Innovation in Indonesia

Selamat datang! (Welcome in Indonesian.) Last week I spent 4 days in Jakarta, a sprawling metropolis of 13 million people. Jakarta's size is nothing compared to the country as a whole, with almost 240 million people spread across 17,000 islands, but the city is without doubt the heart of Indonesia's thriving software developer community. Naturally, it's where Google chose to hold it's first ever Dev Fest in Indonesia, on the Anggrek campus of our host, Binus University.

As part of Dev Fest, I was on a panel with three Indonesian entrepreneurs and one entrepreneur turned VC. What impressed me about the panel was not so much the differences, but the similarities. Indonesian entrepreneurs, and aspiring ones, are grappling with the same issues as their counterparts elsewhere. But first some background about the tech scene in Indonesia.

First, mobile phone growth is exploding in Indonesia. Indonesian mobile web search queries, i.e., searches performed from a web browser on a smart phone, are the 3rd highest in the world, after the US and Japan. Anecdotally, this is evident driving around Jakarta, with the majority of people everywhere holding mobile phones, many of them Blackberrys. And I'm not just talking about the so-called "elite" district around the Hotel Indonesia (the "Ha Ee" to the locals, a beautiful hotel incidentally). Jakarta lacks high-speed mass transit and most of the driving around Jakarta is at walking speeds, so you've ample time to observe what's happening on the streets. I "squeezed" in 3 meetings over 7 hours on my first day in Jakarta, so I spent more time in the back of the car than in meeting rooms.

Second, the use of social media by Indonesians is equally impressive. Indonesia has the 3rd largest number of Facebook users (by country), after the US and the UK, and is rapidly catching up to 2nd place. Indonesians are also in love with Twitter, with ComScore reporting that 21% of the country’s internet population use Twitter. As a result, worldwide rising trends on Twitter often feature an Indonesian trend.

In short, Indonesian users are at the forefront of two exciting global technology trends that are converging, mobile and social.

Now back to the panel, introducing the panelists from left to right in the photo:


Selina Limman (@urbanesia), the founder of and CEO of Urbanesia, an online "lifestyle city directory" with a mission to make city living fun and convenient. Urbanesia blends mobile and social nicely, with business listings and user-generated content (UGC) for lifestyle and everyday needs, combined with location-based search for users to discover relevant content.

Willson Cuaca (@willsoncuaca), the co-founder of East Ventures, a new VC firm founded in Singapore, with a focus on early stage web/mobile startups in Indonesia and Singapore. EV has invested in Urbanesia and 3 other companies to date: Tokopedia, an e-commerce marketplace, Apps Foundry, a mobile apps producer for Blackberry, iPhone and Android, and Foound, a social mobile app to arrange hangouts, or is that a mobile social app?

Andrew Darwis, the co-founder and CTO of Kaskus, an online community with over over 2.1 million members, generating more than 600 million page views per month, the 6th most popular website in Indonesia and the most popular local website(source Alexa). Andrew describes Kaskus as "an info center where questions are asked and answered by the community members themselves.”

Fajar Budiprasetyo, the co-founder and CEO of Koprol, which he describes as a "geosocial network that focuses on conversation". Koprol was acquired by Yahoo back in May. Successful acquisitions like this are still relatively rare in Indonesia, but Fajar's US education and Silicon Valley experience no doubt gave him the edge.

And that guy on the right is me (@scruzin). I've done a few startups too; my last one being NetPriva which I sold to Expand Networks in 2007, the year I joined Google Australia.

See the trend? All three entrepreneurs and East Ventures are thoroughly embracing mobile and/or social opportunities.

Now for the similarities; the questions from the audience were pretty much the same as I would have expected from a similar crowd in Silicon Valley or Sydney. The following four questions are indicative.

* How do you choose between growing your company and selling it?
Answer: It depends, there's no right or wrong way.
* For web/mobile apps, what are the best monetization strategies?
Answer: there's lots of ways - ads, app marketplace sales, subscriptions, etc.
* How do you do you market your products?
Answer: good product market themselves, but failing that, use social media, build in social/viral features, such as refer-a-friend, rapid release cycles,strategic partnerships, etc.
* How can we ensure our startup succeeds?
Answer: have guts, go for it, don't worry about fear of failure, collaborate/network with your fellow entrepreneurs, never rest on your laurels, etc.

The main difference I observed is that in Indonesia today, there are relatively few local success stories; with role models in short supply, more people are still finding their entrepreneurial legs. If the enthusiasm of the participants at Dev Fest is anything to go by though, I fully expect to see some exciting innovations coming out of Indonesia in the near future. I'm already looking forward to my next trip.

Lihat nantil.

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Performance at Scale on the Google Display Network

As you’ve heard us say, one of our key goals is to help our advertisers and agencies drive better performance with their display advertising campaigns.

As users increasingly spend time across a growing number of sites, however, display advertising is becoming more challenging for many marketers. Last year alone there were 47 million new web sites created. Contextual targeting can help by automatically showing your ad to users on web pages related to your products on the millions of sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). But building and managing your campaigns can still be time-consuming. So how do you reach your target audience easily and efficiently while meeting your business goals?

Today, we’re launching two tools to help -- the Display Campaign Optimiser and the Contextual Targeting Tool, two powerful features that help you maximise your performance on the GDN, while saving you valuable time and resources.

Display Campaign Optimiser. This new tool automatically manages targeting and bidding for your Display Network campaigns with the goal of increasing your conversions while meeting your advertising objectives. You simply provide us with your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA), creatives and budget, and the Display Campaign Optimizer goes to work, showing your ads in all the right places, automatically. It monitors your campaign performance and, in real time, adjusts your campaign accordingly. Your campaigns stay optimised, as it “learns” and does more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. For example, Seventh Generation, a company that sells eco-friendly household cleaning, baby care and personal care products, was looking to connect with more “green” consumers across the web and get them to download coupons from their site for use in-store. After implementing the Display Campaign Optimiser, the tool delivered 60% of the coupon downloads they got on their site, with a CPA 20% below their target. Further, analysis of our beta testers showed that on average, campaign using Display Campaign Optimiser were likely responsible for almost one-third of the accounts’ total conversion volume with CPAs within 6% of their peer group CPA.

The Display Campaign Optimiser is now available globally for larger campaigns running on the Google Display Network.

Contextual Targeting Tool. While the Display Campaign Optimiser is an automated solution that does all the heavy lifting on your behalf, the Contextual Targeting Tool helps you more efficiently build your own display campaigns. This tool is ideal for advertisers who prefer transparency and control over their campaigns’ targeting and bidding. The Contextual Targeting Tool builds tightly themed keyword lists for your display campaigns, which are used to contextually target your ads. Tightly themed keywords lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting. With this tool, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of ad groups in minutes, quickly scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting and control over your campaign.

For example, if you sell yoga gear, normally, you might take the time to build out separate ad groups around each of your product lines, such as yoga mats, yoga clothing, yoga gear, etc. Inputting each product category into the Contextual Targeting Tool will generate even more tightly themed keyword lists. For example, inputting ‘yoga mats’ into the tool generates more specific ad groups, such as designer yoga mats, thick yoga mats, yoga mats with designs, etc. These are all separate ad groups that can help you generate additional traffic and sales, which you wouldn’t necessarily think of creating when manually building out your campaigns.

This week, we’re beginning a phased launch of the Contextual Targeting Tool, and it will become available to more advertisers over the coming weeks and months.

Whether you’re looking for an easier way of building out your display campaigns or looking for a more robust, automated solution that continually optimises bids and targeting, we think these tools will help you easily and efficiently achieve performance at scale with your display campaigns.

Posted by Karen Stocks, Head of Display for Google Australia

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Learnings of an entrepreneur - Bangkok edition


I'm in Bangkok for Google's first Dev Fest in Thailand. In a couple of hours I'll be on a panel discussing entrepreneurship so I'm jotting down ahead of time some of the things I'm going to talk about. (I lived in Japan early in my career where I worked in the Japanese language, so know how hard it can be to follow a speaker in a foreign language.) These are some of the most important things I've learned as an entrepreneur. One day I'll write the full version.

Caveat Emptor: The journey of an entrepreneur is a personal one. YMMV.

Learning 1: Do what you love

I fell in love with computers as a high school kid and never looked back. I give a lot of the credit to my maths teacher, Mr Ian Haines, who started the computer club.

Learning 2: Seek opportunities

I could hardly wait to see the world after graduating from Adelaide University and lived in Japan for several years. From Pachinko software (success!), to translation software (fail!), one thing led to another and I ended up in California.

Learning 3: Meet lots of people

Next I went to Stanford, I played with LISP machines and AI, but, much more importantly, I met lots of people; people who became future investors, fellow entrepreneurs, employees, and in some cases, lifelong friends.

Personal contacts are like innovation; you can never have enough.

Learning 4: Make sacrifices

Let's face it. It takes guts to be an entrepreneur and you're going to have to make sacrifices to succeed.

Learning 5: The 3 A's of entrepreneurship

Successful companies are constantly reviewing what is working and what is not, and adapting. My 3 As of entrepreneurship:

Audit - what you're doing, constantly
Admit - when things aren't working
Adapt - and survive

Learning 6: Get focused

Good technology and good people are not enough. You need to focus on the best opportunities.

Learning 7: Have fun

Life is too short for un-fun stuff. Having fun is the corollary to doing what you love, which completes the circle.

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The promise of Government 2.0


Orginally posted as What I know to be true for the Government 2.0 taskforce.

What I know to be true and what I hope for the taskforce

I’m Alan Noble, serial entrepreneur, technology junkie, and head of engineering at Google Australia/NZ. I’m delighted to be on the Gov2.0 taskforce in a personal capacity. After 25 years living and breathing technology, here’s what I know to be true and here’s what I hope to drive forward on the Gov2.0 taskforce.

Information is more powerful when it’s set free

Information is becoming a pervasive and free resource, driving the growth of the digital economy worldwide. And yet very useful, publicly funded, non-confidential public sector information, such as public transport data, is still locked up either behind Government firewalls or encumbered with onerous copyright restrictions, of little use to anyone. I want to see this PSI freely available to all. This will promote great social benefits, not least the immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here. Google’s Victorian bushfires map is a great example, and was only possible because the Victorian Country Fire Authority had the foresight to put an RSS feed on their site.

Transparency promotes democracy and demands accountability

Australians want answers to questions like “How are you spending my money?” Government can do much more to promote a culture of pro-disclosure and transparency. Making government information more accessible online has the power to make Government more accountable and to increase participation from Australian citizens. This will go a long way in restoring trust in Government.

Change begins at home

In promoting the digital economy and fostering a culture of transparency and information sharing, Government must walk the walk and get with the digital program. The vast majority of computing and information will be in the cloud and a younger generation will not know any differently. Our leaders today should embrace online communication and collaboration tools to be active participants in the community and open up a dialogue with citizens.

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Why Tech Chomp?



Welcome to Tech Chomp.

I've been guest blogging for several years now, but I've decided it's high time for me to bite the bullet and have my own blog. Over the next few months I'll cross post some of my favorite earlier blog posts to kick start things.

So what's with the name, Tech Chomp?

"Tech" because I'm a tech-loving geek, so I'll mainly blog about tech stuff. "Chomp" because a chomp is bigger than a bite. I already use Twitter @scruzin for "info bites", and I need something that supports more than 140 characters for "info chomps". Also, chomp means to "mash" or "grind", and I'll be mashing up interesting stuff and sharing it.

That's all for now.

Alan Noble

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Help Us Make Blogger Better (again)

A little over a year ago, we asked all of you to speak your mind and let us know what we could do to make Blogger better. Two thousand ideas and seventy-five thousand votes later, we had quite the laundry list of feature requests and feedback to dig through. Our team took a long, hard look at the data and spent the last year cranking out as many of these features and fixes as humanly possible.


To date, we’re happy to say that we’ve been able to launch most of the top-requested features from the list. Here are just a handful of the features you asked for which are now live:


...and that’s just the beginning of the list. We’re also working on a few big improvements that we’re pretty excited about, so stay tuned as we continue to roll things out of the oven in the near future.

Just as we did last year, we’re asking for your input on our Product Ideas page. As always, our ears are open to your feedback and your input has been invaluable over the years in helping us figure out where to put our time and energy.

Please take a moment to vote on and submit ideas, whether specific feature requests or general service improvements. Think about new features that would make you use Blogger more, the things from other services which may be missing, and even the things which may be frustrating at times. We promise to once again take a long look at the feedback, and hope to tackle many of the top issues just as we did last time around.

Thanks again in advance for all your help making Blogger the best service it can be!

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Guest post: Discover amazing products and earn money with OpenSky

This is a guest post by John Caplan, founder and CEO of OpenSky. OpenSky allows bloggers, including all Blogger users, to discover unique products and sell those on their blogs. As we are interested in helping our users find various ways to monetize their blogs, we’ve asked John to introduce OpenSky for our users. -- The Blogger team


For most of you, writing a blog is about sharing your passion in a way that connects you with others. That’s why Blogger was created -- to help people have their own voice on the web to share that passion.

We at OpenSky want to empower you to share even more with the people who read your blog. We do this by helping you discover great products and giving you the ability to share those products on your blog. Not only will you deepen your relationships with your readers, but you’ll also earn money from every sale.

Most everyone who reads your blog probably loves discovering new products, especially unique items that they wouldn’t find in a giant chain store. And your readers will especially love learning about stuff from someone they trust, like you.

That’s why blogging and product recommendations work so well together.

How OpenSky works

OpenSky is a free platform that empowers you to discover and sell unique products that speak to your passion. So you can hook up your readers with great things they’ll love.

While most affiliate programs draw away your audience, on OpenSky you’ll drive readers to an environment dedicated to you and your products.

For every sale you make we split the profits 50/50, which means you can make up to 4x more than a run-of-the-mill affiliate program. We take care of all the order processing, fulfillment and customer service. You get all the credit.

Sign up now, and discover great new products today.

What People Are Saying About OpenSky

Fast Company described us the best when they said:

"OpenSky may have cracked the code for web publishers and small e-tailers, delivering profits to both while helping consumers with a pain-free shopping experience."

Also, see what The New York Times, LA Times, VentureBeat, TechCrunch have written, or watch this video about us from Good Morning America:



Join us (and start selling) today.

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Google Instant coming to Australia

A few weeks ago we introduced a new way of searching that makes search more interactive and helps you find information more quickly and easily. We called it Google Instant, and today we are excited to be rolling out Instant in Australia.

Google Instant combines three core features -- dynamic results, Autocomplete predictions, and ‘scroll-to-search’ functionality -- to deliver smart, predictive results as you type. Here is a video that explains Google Instant in greater depth:



In the month since our initial release, we extended Instant to Google Books, Videos, Blogs and Updates, and launched keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate through search results. We have also learned more about how people are using Instant, and although it is still early days, we wanted to share some of those findings.

People are learning to use Instant. In just two weeks, we saw an increase in the fraction of searches performed without hitting enter or clicking search. People are used to searching on Google by hitting enter or clicking “search,” but we’ve been happy to see that people are quickly adjusting to the new experience.

Search is getting more interactive. We’ve seen about a 7% increase in on-the-fly editing of search queries. Instant isn’t just about time savings, it’s also a new, more fluid way to search. We’ve seen people reformulating their queries more. As you type, you see search results, and often those results can inspire you to type better search terms.

People are making the extra effort to use Instant. In just one week, we saw an increase in the relative number of search sessions starting on the Google homepage, likely because they want to use Instant. Google Instant currently only works on the Google homepage and results page, not in other places such as browser search boxes, the Google Toolbar, and the Chrome Omnibox. As people have learned about Google Instant, many seem to be searching more on the homepage in order to use the feature.

We are thrilled to be bringing Google Instant to Australia, and we look forward to hearing what you think.

Posted by Jonathan Effrat, Product Manager

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ABC launches full-length episodes on YouTube

Love watching the ABC? We’re really happy to announce that the ABC has added long-form shows to YouTube. Now you can watch separate channels for comedy, entertainment and documentaries, which showcase full episodes of great Australian-made shows.



The huge list of shows includes, Review With Myles Barlow, Surfing The Menu, Enough Rope With Andrew Denton, The Librarians, John Safran's Race Relations, Good Game, We Can Be Heroes, Hungry Beast, The Gruen Transfer, Aunty Jack, A Shared Table and so many more.



We’re excited to see more and more full-length content coming online to YouTube: it was only recently that we streamed the entire Indian Premier League to satisfy the strong demand from our users.



Stay tuned for more new episodes from the ABC updated each week.


Posted by Ryan Hall, YouTube Team

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