Google+ Pages on Getting Aussie Business Online: a new way to connect with your customers

Earlier this year we launched our Getting Aussie Business Online program to help small businesses in Australia get an online presence. So far we’ve seen over 27,000 businesses sign up for a free website and to benefit from the digital economy. But getting online is just the first step. The more ways you’re connecting with your customers, the better. That’s why we’re adding a new and free way for small businesses to talk to their clients to Getting Aussie Business Online: Google+ Pages.

Google+ Pages help you connect with people in a number of different ways. People can recommend your business across the web with a +1 and add you to a circle so they follow your updates on Google+. They can also chat with you via video conversations called Hangouts. For example, you can now answer your clients’ questions in-person without ever needing to leave your office. Or give your most loyal customers a behind-the-scenes peek of your latest product or your team in action.

One final tip (for now): add the Google +1 button to your website. All your +1s across the web will be connected directly to your official Google+ Page and may help increase the visibility of your brand in Google search rankings. After all, people want to hear about recommendations from other people that they trust.

If you want to learn more about Google+ Pages, join the webinar with one of our Google+ experts this Friday, 2 Dec, at 3.30pm AEDT. Topics covered include setting up and promoting a Google+ Page for your business as well as improving the performance of your ads with +1 annotations.

Posted by Bora Toska, Small Business Marketing Manager, Google Australia

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Learn with Google how to grow your business online

Many small business owners have asked us for one central place to go to get smart about Google products like AdWords or Google Analytics before diving into the digital unknown. That’s why we’re introducing Learn with Google. Whether you’re looking to grow your business or just to be more productive, these short videos, handouts, and resources will arm you with tips that you can use right away. No login, registration, or payment required--it’s free and regularly updated.

On the site, you’ll learn about:

• Online Fundamentals: Learn why having a website is critical for growing your business even if most of your sales comes from foot traffic and how to create an online marketing plan.
• Marketing Your Business Online: Master the basics of online marketing and search advertising to get more for your money. Learn how to choose the right keywords, write compelling ads copy, and optimise your advertising spend.
• Running Your Business Online: Learn how the ‘cloud’ and tools like Gmail and Google Docs can make your team more collaborative and your business more efficient.

We also know that sometimes a conversation can help. When you’re ready to advertise on Google with AdWords, we’d love to hear from you directly. Our experts can work with you to create a campaign that fits your budget, and ensure that your new ads are seeing results. You can call us on 1800 988 571 during business hours to get started. Once your AdWords account is up and running, we’re eager to make sure that you’re getting the most from Google. There are various ways to contact us, so keep in touch! Of course, we don’t charge for these phone consultations but your mobile operator may charge for the call.

With these new tools and support services, we hope that you’ll look, listen and learn how Google can help you grow your business.

Posted by Richard Flanagan, Head of Small Business Marketing, Google Australia & New Zealand

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App Engine Down Under

Earlier this month the Google App Engine team celebrated coming out of preview to become a fully-supported Google product.

With this major milestone we would like to showcase the Sydney App Engine team who have been working hard on App Engine for more than three years.

App Engine, Google’s cloud application platform, enables developers to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. That means anyone can quickly develop and deploy web applications with simple administration and no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups.

App Engine serves over 2 billion pages a day and powers not only popular apps like the the official Royal Wedding website but also Australian businesses like Ray White and Shoes of Prey.

The Australian App Engine team includes software and site reliability engineers, developer relations and product and technical management. We work on new features, keep the platform running smoothly and support and engage the developer community.

Members of the Sydney App Engine Team

For all those that haven’t built a web application using App Engine before, you can see how easy it is by following our Getting Started Guide.

Posted by Cayden Meyer, Google App Engine Product Manager, Sydney

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Searching spree...then shopping spree? Insights on the 2011 Christmas retail season

Earlier this month, we shared a few early insights on retail search trends for this year’s Christmas shopping season. And from what historical data tells us, over the next five weeks shopping-related search traffic is really going to accelerate.

Over the previous few years, searches for "Christmas" specific questions have climbed fast starting the third week of November. Thus far searches are up year over year in all major retail categories. This year’s big winners include mass merchant retailers (searches up 47%), food and drink (+31%), and toys (+28%).

Over the past few years, a distinctive search pattern has evolved around the Christmas season:

• During the first week of December, shipping windows for international online retailers traditionally close and searches for domestic online retailers rise.

• Two weeks before Christmas, searches for store names plus ‘trading hours’ or ‘location’ begin to rise dramatically. Last year, searches for trading hours grew nearly 250% in the last two weeks before Christmas. This year, such searches are already up 37% year over year -- and over a third of these searches now comes from a mobile device.
• Around December 16th, the last day Australia’s online retailers can guarantee delivery before December 25 and the last in-store retail weekend before Christmas, you can see another big spike in searches for store name plus “hours” and “location”.

Here are three tips from Google for retailers who are reviewing their online ad strategies for the holidays.

1. Review your search ad budget & timing: Santa brings a big increase in shopping search traffic -- make sure you don’t run out of search ad budget too early in the day. Last year, some Google advertisers used up their daily search ads budgets only 1/3 of the way into the Christmas trading day because their daily ad budgets were the same as the middle of the summer. That’s like forgetting to put your most popular product out on shelves during the busiest season of the year.

2. Anticipate key shopping days: Try to anticipate when your customers will be researching and buying gifts online and when they’ll be looking for stores. For example, if you’re a large retailer you may want to focus your search ads on e-commerce queries until mid-December and then shift to ads featuring in-store promotions, maps, and trading hours thereafter.

3. Be ready for mobile: Mobile shopping searches have risen 220% year over year. All retailers should be ready with mobile-friendly websites that prominently display store hours and locations to accommodate people looking for their stores on mobile. Already, over 30% of such searches come from mobile, and we expect that number to rise further during the crucial last 14 days.

Posted by Ross McDonald, Head of Retail, Google Australia & New Zealand

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Google Engage: helping agencies help small businesses

Over the past year, thousands of Australian small businesses have recognized how the Internet can help them market and grow their business. Through our Getting Aussie Business Online program alone we’ve seen over 25,000 businesses sign up for a free website. But getting online is just the first step -- and fortunately there are hundreds of developers, designers, and agencies around Australia who can work hand in hand with small businesses to create and manage their online presence and help with their online marketing.

Last year we launched the Google Engage program to provide educational resources and training to help these organisations serve their clients better. Over the last two weeks more than 300 advertising, web design, and creative agencies attended our Google Engage for Agencies masterclass series to learn new techniques for helping their clients succeed in the digital world. At sessions held around the country in Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney, we brought the latest updates on Google advertising products like AdWords.

We opened the day with insights into the online behaviours of Australians, pointing out the explosive growth in mobile devices as Aussies access the internet while they’re on the go. Today only one out of five businesses with a website having a mobile-friendly version. Agencies can help small businesses ensure that their websites load properly on smartphones and tablets, make use of click-to-call links, and include critical info like store location and operating hours.

David Booth, a Google certified trainer from US-based digital agency Cardinal Path, then took the podium to share his more than 10 years of experience running an agency that manages online marketing campaigns for SMBs. He shared practical tips for how to improve a client’s return-on-investment from their advertising budget and gave advice on how to run your agency more efficiently.

We also introduced the audience to the brand new Pages for Google+ offering, which is a way for organisations to connect with other people, brands, and businesses online. Google Engage agencies including Reload Media and Eminent Online Marketing have been quick to start taking advantage of Google+, as well as small businesses such as DUGG, a mens underwear retailer.

Armed with new tips and tricks, the attendees are ready to go help Australian small businesses become even more effective in their online marketing. Going into 2012 we’ll be taking some of our training events to Hangouts on Google+ to speak with our Engage participants more frequently. Watch this space for updates.

Posted by Richard Flanagan, Head of Small Business Marketing, Google Australia & New Zealand

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Every search tells a story

We’re constantly inspired by our users and how they rely on Google products to achieve the extraordinary. Today I want to share three amazing Australian stories.

A New/Old Prosthetic
Seven years ago Hobart motorcycle mechanic Mark Lesek lost his arm in an accident. Unhappy with the prosthetic he was given, Mark used Google Search to find patents and designs -- from the early 1900s -- to build a new one.

Neighbours in Need
As the waters moved in and destroyed countless homes during the Queensland floods helicopter pilot Mark Kempton and his team rescued 43 people from roof and treetops. With streets and landmarks submerged, Mark turned to Google Maps on his mobile to find people in distress. The heroism of Mark and his team has recently been recognised with a Pride of Australia award.




Ancient Ruins
Professor David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia uses Google Earth to scan thousands of square kilometers in Saudi Arabia and Jordan to discover ancient ruins. Most recently he uncovered thousands of prehistoric man-made stone structures across the Arabian peninsula -- without leaving his desk.



You can see more inspiring search stories from other people around the world on Search Stories.

Posted by Lucinda Barlow, head of marketing Google Australia and NZ

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Custom domains simplified

(Cross posted on the Blogger +page)

Adding a custom domain to your blog is a great way to increase your brand identity. Setting one up, however, can sometimes be a frustrating experience, especially if you aren’t quite sure of the difference between an A-NAME and C-NAME record or where to find them.

The good news is that the folks at Go Daddy created a handy tool that simplifies the process and makes it possible to redirect your blogspot domain to a custom Go Daddy domain with the click of a button.

If you already own a Go Daddy domain and would like to connect it with your Blogger blog, head to the Go Daddy tool, log in to your Go Daddy account, enter your preferred domain or subdomain (for instance www.example.com or blog.example.com), click Confirm, and voila, your DNS records are updated.

Once your DNS records are set correctly, log in to Blogger, click “Add a custom domain” in the Publishing section of the Settings page, follow the short instructions, and your custom domain will be set up and redirecting in 24 hours or less.

If you purchased a domain from another provider, don’t worry, we’ve got a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the setup process. And finally, if you would like your blog to redirect to a custom domain, you can purchase one and get it set up without complicated configuration right from the Blogger dashboard in the Publishing section of the Settings page.

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

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Our Mobile Planet - a new resource for mobile marketers

A few weeks back we highlighted some of the most interesting statistics about how Australians use their smartphones, including the fact that Australia has the second highest smartphone penetration in the world.

Today we’re making it possible for anyone to dig through the thousands of data points that we collected, to come to your own conclusions, with Our Mobile Planet. This new website features an interactive tool that anyone can use to create custom charts that will help them understand the mobile consumer better and make the right decisions on their mobile strategy.



We encourage you to explore the site yourself, but in the meantime, here are some highlights on how you can use it:

• Extensive data: See the penetration of smartphones across 30 markets, where and why people use smartphones, and what they do when they’re using them. Also get stats on mobile commerce behavior and perceptions of mobile advertising.
• Powerful comparisons: Easily select multiple statistics and multiple countries to compare with one another.
• Easy graphs: Once you’ve selected your data points and countries, it’s just a click of a button to create an image to embed in a presentation, or to download the data into a spreadsheet.
• Segmentation: Cut the data by age, gender and/or intensity of internet usage.

To get started, visit www.ourmobileplanet.com.

Posted by Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager, Asia-Pacific.

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Doodle 4 Google winner doodles for “My Future Australia”

In July we announced our latest Doodle 4 Google competition, in which we asked school students across Australia to draw their own version of the Google logo, inspired by the theme “My Future Australia.”

Now, 4500 doodles later, we can announce the winning doodle!

Congratulations to Timothy Winkels of Padua College Mornington in Victoria, whose winning doodle displayed his hope that a future Australia will have more National Parks and a cleaner, protected environment. “Sometimes nature is such a good refuge that I escape my own self,” wrote Tim about his work. “The environment saves me, so I am responsible enough to save it.”

His doodle was chosen by the original Google doodler Dennis Hwang, who appreciated the doodle’s skill and creativity, as well as the optimistic message and tone. “The longer you look at it, the more things you discover within it, which is not always easy to pull off,” he said.

Timothy’s doodle will be featured on google.com.au early next year.

Three of the age group winners spent yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Damian, Timothy and Christina were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the of the gallery and exhibitions and had their very own special portrait taken by the gallery’s multimedia expert and resident photographer Mark Mohell. The young doodlers also saw their work in a special digital display of the 32 doodle state and territory winners.

The day was not without drama when one of our age group winners, Ineka, missed the morning tour due to an earlier emergency appendectomy. But proving that you can’t keep a good doodler down, she came directly from hospital to accept her trophy in the afternoon. The NPG will arrange her own personal tour of the gallery when she’s up and about.

Thank you to all our thousands of doodlers from across Australia, and look out for Timothy’s doodle on our homepage.

Posted by Leticia Lentini, Event Marketing Manager, Google Australia.

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Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

In amongst all the technical workshops at yesterday’s Google Developer Day in Sydney was a panel discussion on venture capital and entrepreneurialism. Getting an idea off the ground takes as much business judgment as it does technical know-how, so we brought in a few experts that have been around the block with a start-up or five.

Rebekah Campbell, founder of Posse told us how it took one-and-a-half years and “more than 1000 meetings” to raise enough money to get her idea off the ground. She talked about the various forms of funding sources, such as government grants.

Many in the audience asked Mick Liubinskas, co-founder of Australian angel investor group Pollenizer, about the do’s and don’ts of attracting investment. His advice? Do be stubborn about sticking to your vision. But don’t wait forever to launch. A fast launch is essential to testing your idea or concept. And don’t be so inflexible to not consider a different approach.

Scott Farquhar from Atlassian told us about the importance of keeping focus and how making lots of mistakes are okay (such as opening up, and then quickly closing, a New York office after realising it was in the wrong place). Just make sure the mistakes aren’t fatal ones, he says.

What came out strongly in the session is that you need to take the leap and not be afraid of failure. While Australians celebrate success, we do not do so well at embracing those who tried and failed. Business people who lead failed companies are too often tainted with innuendo of wrongdoing, when we should look to them as pioneers who can bring wisdom to their next venture. At Google we say: “fail fast and iterate.” We cultivate an environment where failure is fine, as long as you do it quickly and learn from it.

Behind most people’s stories of commercial success are often a history of start-ups which didn’t go the way they intended. Just ask Pollenizer’s Mick, who has worked on 150 businesses - not all of them hitting the mark.

At the event I asked how many people in the room wanted to do a start-up one day. Three-quarters of the 100+ crowd put up their hands. So the good news is that there’s certainly no shortage of budding Aussie entrepreneurs wanting to give it a go.

Originally posted on the Google Australia blog

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2011 Christmas retail search trends: Santa’s got a smartphone

While Christmas Day may be 6 weeks away, the Christmas shopping season is already in full swing, and everyone wants to know what’s in store for the millions of businesses, shops, and retailers looking forward to a very busy Christmas. We may not have a crystal ball, but we do have a good sense of what Australia’s Christmas shoppers are searching for online. So we started crunching the numbers to see what we could learn about how people are searching and shopping this year.

We discovered some interesting facts. First of all, 2011 is retail’s biggest year yet online--even bigger than the record-setting online shopping season driven by the strong Aussie dollar last year. Year over year, shopping-related searches are up 29%, making it more important than ever for businesses who want a piece of the action to get online.

However, it looks as though this year’s true Christmas miracle is mobile. While retail has posted impressive gains over last year’s season, the number of shopping queries coming from mobile devices increased 220% year on year. In fact, one quarter of all Christmas shopping-related Google searches this year now come from mobile devices.

This growth may be dramatic, but it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. As we revealed in September, Australia has the second-highest smartphone penetration in the world. And by the end of this year, more than 50% of Australian adults will own a smartphone--just in time for Christmas. They’re using those smartphones to research gifts and contact local businesses. 1 in 5 sometimes even bypass the PC to make online purchases directly via their mobile phones.

So what does this mean for retail? To start with, it means that more people are looking for them, in more ways, and in more places: on the bus, from the train, even from the sofa while watching TV. At the same time, it means Australian businesses can’t afford to ignore mobile--without mobile-friendly websites, they’re invisible to the shoppers who’re trying to find them.

The good news is that it’s fine to keep it simple--there’s no need to rush to build complicated mobile e-commerce websites or expensive mobile apps. 49% of the Australians we surveyed had used their smartphone to research and then call local businesses, while 45% visit a local business they’ve found using their smartphone. That means that most businesses can start by making sure their location, contact information, and opening hours are accessible on mobiles.

The Christmas season is a marathon that ends in a sprint, and there’s lots still to be learned from how people search. So stay tuned for updates as the shopping season unfolds.

Posted by Ross McDonald, Head of Retail, Google Australia & New Zealand

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BlogWorld 2011 Recap

As we mentioned last week, some members of the Blogger team from Google HQ in Mountain View, Tokyo, Dublin, and Sydney (see group photo below) headed to Los Angeles to attend the 2011 BlogWorld & New Media Expo.

One of the primary reasons we attended the expo was to meet Blogger users 1:1, and to gain a better understanding of what we can do to improve the product to better meet your needs.

In addition to these discussions, we conducted surveys with many conference attendees to collect more in-depth feedback. Thank you! We really appreciate the valuable and candid responses.

In the survey results and our 1:1 discussions with you we heard a few common themes:

• You’re hoping to widen your audience with Google+
• You’d like more opportunities to customize and use gadgets with Dynamic Views
• You’re looking for tips and best practices for how to make more money from your blog with AdSense

Your requests have been shared with the broader team and we’re hard at work making them happen for you. Stay tuned to the Buzz Blog in the coming weeks for follow ups, and in the meantime, check out some other photos from the expo below.

Bruce and Mara of MlovesM

Sabrina and Michael in the Blogger photo booth

Sabine and Lisa host a Google+ Hangout with bloggers from around the world

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager

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Blogger’s Brand New Google+ Page

Earlier this week, the Google+ team launched Pages, a new way for you to keep up-to-date with your interests and build relationships with the people who share them. Today, the Blogger team is launching our own Google+ Page, and we’d like to invite you to add us to one of your circles.

By adding Blogger's Page in one of your circles, you'll start seeing updates from the Blogger team in your Google+ stream. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with other bloggers by writing comments on the posts.

Here's a quick list of what to expect:

• Product news and announcements
• Video Hangouts with the Blogger team
• Spotlights on Blogger users and their blogs
• Pro tips from the Blogger team and other users

Lastly, be sure to mention +Blogger when you share your own tips -- if we come across something particularly helpful, we may reshare it.

See you on Google+!

Posted by Lisa Ding, Community Manager

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Creativity & Technology: Better Together, Especially with Cocktails

Last night at the CarriageWorks in Sydney, Google Australia hosted Creative Sandbox. We wanted to celebrate the intersection of creativity and technology by bringing together people who excel on both sides of that equation: creatives and planners from Australia’s top agencies, big thinking advertisers, and developers with awesome skills in areas like mobile, HTML5, social, local and gaming.

More than 400 people came to the event to discover how Google technology can bring creative ideas to life. They played with creations like helicopter view for Google Maps, the new eBooks offering, and the Android-based game We Draw on a Google TV. There was plenty of interactive fun at the demo zones. Visitors interacted with our green screen to become part of YouTube classics like Beached Az, Tipp-Ex, or Volkswagen’s “The Force”. They could also get Androidified and take home a postcard souvenir.

New York-based Aussie and Google marketer Ed Sanders took the stage to share his golden rules for amazing creative campaigns: Know your users, know the magic of your product, and connect the two; innovation doesn’t require invention; real stories are better than fake ones; show don’t tell; and fast is better than slow.

The Communications Council also announced two new initiatives that bring your creativity to technology, developed in partnership with Google. Show & Tell is a gallery-style YouTube channel curated by AWARD, which will showcase the best creative work from Australia and New Zealand. They also shared an early demo of Trapeze, a web platform designed to help developers and creative types connect and collaborate.

For more from Google’s Creative Sandbox, put this page into one of your circles on Google+.

Posted by Kathryn Apte, Agency Marketing Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand

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Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

In amongst all the technical workshops at yesterday’s Google Developer Day in Sydney was a panel discussion on venture capital and entrepreneurialism. Getting an idea off the ground takes as much business judgment as it does technical know-how, so we brought in a few experts that have been around the block with a start-up or five.

Rebekah Campbell, founder of Posse told us how it took one-and-a-half years and “more than 1000 meetings” to raise enough money to get her idea off the ground. She talked about the various forms of funding sources, such as government grants.

Many in the audience asked Mick Liubinskas, co-founder of Australian angel investor group Pollenizer, about the do’s and don’ts of attracting investment. His advice? Do be stubborn about sticking to your vision. But don’t wait forever to launch. A fast launch is essential to testing your idea or concept. And don’t be so inflexible to not consider a different approach.

Scott Farquhar from Atlassian told us about the importance of keeping focus and how making lots of mistakes are okay (such as opening up, and then quickly closing, a New York office after realising it was in the wrong place). Just make sure the mistakes aren’t fatal ones, he says.

What came out strongly in the session is that you need to take the leap and not be afraid of failure. While Australians celebrate success, we do not do so well at embracing those who tried and failed. Business people who lead failed companies are too often tainted with innuendo of wrongdoing, when we should look to them as pioneers who can bring wisdom to their next venture. At Google we say: “fail fast and iterate.” We cultivate an environment where failure is fine, as long as you do it quickly and learn from it.

Behind most people’s stories of commercial success are often a history of start-ups which didn’t go the way they intended. Just ask Pollenizer’s Mick, who has worked on 150 businesses - not all of them hitting the mark.

At the event I asked how many people in the room wanted to do a start-up one day. Three-quarters of the 100+ crowd put up their hands. So the good news is that there’s certainly no shortage of budding Aussie entrepreneurs wanting to give it a go.

Posted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director, Google Australia.

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Introducing custom mobile templates

(Cross-posted from the Blogger Developers Network Blog)

Many Bloggers put a lot of time and effort into creating a unique look for their blog, so today we’re excited to announce that custom templates are now available for mobile devices.

Side by side comparison of web and mobile experience.

If you have a custom template for your blog and want it to appear on mobile browsers as well, visit the “Template” tab of your dashboard, click on the gear icon beneath the mobile template preview, and select “Custom” from the “Choose mobile template” pulldown.

For more technical details and sample code, head over to the Blogger Developers Network blog.

We hope you enjoy creating your own custom mobile templates and sharing them with your readers.

Posted by Brett Morgan, Developer Relations Engineer

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You cannot innovate without failure

Australia has had mixed success when it comes to being a nation of innovators. A recent federal government report concludes that while Aussies are great at incremental innovation - which primarily means adapting overseas innovations - we fall behind when it comes to creating our own opportunities and bringing new things to an international marketplace.

Our bias towards incremental innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. Australia's resource and agricultural industries are some of the most competitive in the world due to our ability to improve existing technologies. And despite our country's size, we are blessed with the people, education and capital to foster success. So if it is not resources that are holding us back, is there something about our culture that discourages that big-picture thinking?

From my experience, what may be holding us back from innovation is our attitude towards failure. It might sound counterintuitive, but big innovation and failure are intimately intertwined. Any innovation is essentially a market experiment and as with any experiment, it carries considerable risk and high failure rates. Innovators in America, and particularly Silicon Valley, understand this only too well.

“A distinguishing characteristic of the US economy, of US culture, if you like, is failure is never permanent. You're not kicked out of the game,” said Harvard professor and an expert on entrepreneurialism, Bill Sahlman.

“As a matter of fact, if you are part of a failed venture, as long as you didn't lie, cheat or steal, you're considered 'experienced'.”

While Australians are comfortable with success, we do not do so well at embracing failure. Australians can be harsh on entrepreneurs who try and fail. For example, business people who lead failed companies are too often tainted with innuendo of wrongdoing, even if there is no proof of doing so. The moral taint of trying and failing in Australia is high, and because you cannot innovate without failure, many great ideas do not even get off the ground.

Recently, I was asked to fill a questionnaire in order to join an Australian advisory board. Of the 10 questions I was asked, there were multiple ones about whether I was involved with any companies that had gone into bankruptcy or receivership. Having spent years in America where being part of a dot-com bust was worn as a badge of honour, the contrast in having to disclose bankruptcy or receivership like a criminal record, rather than as an opportunity to talk about experience, was stark.

In that environment, why would would any Australian university graduate want to pursue a start-up and risk a career that has not yet even begun? As a culture we need to embrace failure as much as we embrace success.

The publication of Steve Jobs' biography revisits the time when he was pushed out of Apple - a company he co-founded. It was no doubt a difficult time for the entrepreneur, but instead of being tainted by this perceived failure, he was able to use that experience to move on and eventually rejoin the company, building it into the success it is today.

If you look into the history of many innovators - past and present - you will often find similarly rich examples of failure being a pit stop on the way to great success.

At Google, an appetite for failure is built by the way we do things. We are in an incredibly competitive industry and you need to keep innovating or you will become irrelevant to users and the market. How we deal with that it is through our culture of innovation, staying agile, taking risks, tolerating failure and learning from every mistake.

Google Wave, a product that tried to reinvent the way we collaborate, was developed by the Australian engineering team. While it didn't work out as a standalone product, the experience gave us a new understanding of how people use technology to collaborate. Many of the features we developed for Wave can be found in other Google products today.

Failure doesn't have to be expensive, it can be cheap and fast. At Google we have a saying: “Fail fast and iterate.” This is something we need to train all entrepreneurs to do. This creates an environment where people are encouraged to tackle large problems and take those big bets. If you have a work culture where bringing your mistakes to the table every week is a normal thing to do, it feels less like failing and more like learning.

The upside is that it has never been a better time to innovate. For Australians, the internet has made the tyranny of distance almost irrelevant and opened up a global market for our ideas.

Last month Julpan, a company founded in New York by an Australian-educated engineer, was bought by Twitter for an undisclosed sum. The fact that the company was only one-year-old shows how great ideas can quickly have enormous reach. While there are other reasons why start-ups like Julpan choose to head abroad rather than stick around and grow locally, they all point to a less than optimal culture on innovation.

Australia has the smarts to become a hotbed of innovation. We just need to create an environment where it is OK to take the risk.

Originally posted as an SMH opinion piece.

PS: I chose this image for this post because I think these words are good advice for any entrepreneur.

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The Next Step for Google+: First People, Now Pages

This morning we launched Google+ Pages on Google+.  This means that the businesses and brands you care about -- whether it be your local pub, footy team, or TV show -- can soon create their own page on Google+.  You can recommend them by giving them a +1, or you can add them to a circle to follow their updates.


Starting today, you can find Google Australia on Google+.  We’ll be posting an eclectic mix of Google news announcements, Google happenings and events in Australia, and anything else we find interesting from the world of technology and the web.  We’d love for you to add us to your circles!  (Note - we can’t share anything with you unless you add us to a circle first.)


Some early examples of Google+ Pages include Burberry, X Games, and The Muppets.  (In fact, the Muppets are doing a live Google Hangout on Google+ this morning.)  We have also created some other pages for ourselves, including an official page for Google as a whole and products such as Android and Chrome. Any Aussie business, brand, or organisation will soon be able to join the community at plus.google.com/pages/create.  


 Add Google Australia to your circles.

  Posted by Courtney Hohne, Google Communications

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Google eBooks arrive Down Under

Today, Google eBooks has landed in Australia, and whether you’re a bookworm or casual reader, you’re invited to stop by and stock up on some great reads for summer.

We've got hundreds of thousands of titles to choose from, including plenty of bestsellers, and millions of free eBooks on top of that. It's easy to find great Australian authors like Kate Grenville, Thomas Keneally, Geraldine Brooks and Christos Tsiolkas.

Google eBooks is all about choice: we’re offering more titles and more ways to buy, access and read them, so that your library is literally at your fingertips. You can choose from great titles from hundreds of local publisher partners at launch, including award-winning publishers like Allen & Unwin, Scribe and Text Publishing, not to mention the many thousands of international publishers Google works with around the world. In addition, we are working with some of the best local booksellers in Australia, including Booktopia and Dymocks who are selling eBooks today, with QBD The Bookshop and The Co-op Bookshop coming soon.



Plus, choose your favorite device for any occasion. You can discover, purchase and read our eBooks on almost any device, including your PC or netbook; Android and Apple smartphone or tablet; or pretty much any eReader, picking up at the same spot that you left off as you move from one device to another.

We're also pleased to report that with our Australian launch, we are opening up our Google eBooks affiliate program in Australia, Canada and the UK. The affiliate program allows retailers, bloggers, book publishers and other website owners to earn commissions when they refer their users to Google eBooks. To learn more, please visit our Google eBooks Affiliate Integration Help Centre page.

We’re happy to make it even easier for all Australians to discover, buy and read their next great book. Head on over to our new eBookstore, visit one of our great retail partners, or check out the new books tab on the updated Android Market and get stuck into your next amazing story today.

Posted by Mark Tanner, eBooks Partnerships Manager, Google Australia

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Sydney’s Google Developer Day 2011

It’s just one more sleep to Google Developer Day in Sydney.

We’re hard at work preparing to welcome over 1200 developers to Google Developer Day in Sydney tomorrow.

For the uninitiated, Google Developer Day is a one-day event featuring advanced technical talks and workshops on Google platforms and products.

There’s a great line up exploring the latest developments in Android, Chrome, HTML5, Google’s cloud technologies, Google+ and more. For example, there will be sessions on Building Integrated Applications on Google's Cloud Technologies, Bleeding Edge HTML5 and High-performance graphics for Android.

We’ll also be hearing from some Aussie and Kiwi entrepreneurs on what it takes to run a successful start-up, as well as hearing from a diverse group of speakers in the ever-popular Ignite lightning talk sessions. You can see the full agenda here.

We’ve already showcased the finalists of the Google Developer Day Open Call HTML5 challenge, and tomorrow we will showcase the finalists of the Google Developer Day Open Call Android ADK challenge. Be prepared to be impressed by an UAV, a rainbow predictor and cocktail-mixing machine all developed on the Android platform.

For those who are in town early, there’s a Sydney GTUG meetup tonight.

If you can’t be at the event, you can still download the GDD Android app, follow the speakers and local Googlers circle on Google+ and follow the hashtag #gddsyd there or on Twitter.

Posted by Sally-Ann Williams, Program Manager, Engineering

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