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Product Descriptions Google's product development philosophy is centered on rapid and continuous innovation, with frequent releases of new technologies that we seek to improve with every iteration. We often make products available early in their development stages by posting them on Google Labs, at test locations online or directly on Google.com. If our users find a product useful, we promote it to "beta" status for additional testing. Our beta testing periods often last a year or more. Once we are satisfied that a product is of high quality and utility, we remove the beta label and make it a core Google product. Our current principal products and services are described below.
* Review guides available. Last updated May 2006.
Google AdWords is our global advertising
program that enables advertisers to reach the people who are interested
in their products or services. Advertisers use our automated tools,
often with little or no assistance from us, to create ads, place bids
to serve their ads, select the types of sites where they'd like their
ads to appear, and set daily spending budgets. AdWords features an
automated, low-cost online signup process that enables advertisers
to implement campaigns that can go live in 15 minutes or less.
For larger advertisers, we offer additional services that help to maximize returns on their Internet marketing investments and improve their ability to run large, dynamic campaigns. These include:
The Google AdSense program enables websites
in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text
and image ads that are precisely targeted to site content so
well-matched, in fact, that readers actually find them useful. Targeting
can be based on search results or on web content. We share most of
the revenue generated from these ads with our partner publishers.
We are focused on building products and services that
benefit our users and enable them to find relevant information quickly
and easily. We offer, free of charge, all of the following services
at Google.com, and many of them at our international sites. Get email automatically sent to you when
there are new Google results for your search terms. We currently offer
three types of alerts: News, Web, and News & Web. A News alert is an
email message notifying you of new articles that appear in the top
10 results of your Google News search. A Web alert is an email message
notifying you of new web pages appear in the top 20 results for your
Google web search. A News & Web alert is a combination: notification
when new articles related to your search term make it into the top
10 results for a Google News search, or the top 20 results for a Google
web search. Google Answers provides people with help finding information and answering questions. Users set a fee they are willing to pay and submit questions to the Google Answers service. One of more than 500 carefully screened freelance researchers responds, usually within 24 hours. Google Answers researchers are experienced web searchers with strong communication skills who often have expertise in various fields. An extensive collection of past responses is available to our users free of charge. Google Blog Search is the easiest way to search for blog content on the web. Using the same technology that powers Google's web search, Google Blog Search provides fresh, relevant search results from millions of feed-enabled blogs. Users can search for blog posts, blog names, authors, or a specific date range. Google Blog Search also features Google's SafeSearch technology, giving users control over the content of their search results. Google Book Search is an index of book content that makes it easy to find books that interest you. Like a card catalog, it helps you learn where to get the full book from a bookstore or a library. Use the Google Book Search homepage to get only book results, or Google.com to see book results as part of your regular search results. It makes the full text of millions of books (including out of print and public domain books) instantly searchable, and makes those books discoverable. For authors and publishers it means that millions of books, including out of print and public domain titles, are instantly discoverable and able to be purchased. Google Book Search is like a free marketing program that protects copyright while dramatically expanding the potential audience for, in theory, every book in the world. Through Google Catalogs, we provide access to the full content of more than 6,600 mail-order catalogs, many of which were previously unavailable online. Built with Google's core search technology, Custom Search Engine prioritizes or restricts search results based on websites and pages that users specify, and can be tailored to reflect their point of view or area of expertise. Creators of a Custom Search Engine can make it look and feel like their website or blog; make money from their Custom Search Engine by participating in the Google AdSense program; and collaborate with others to include more sites in their search index.. Google Web Directory enables people to browse and search through web sites that have been organized into categories. Our directory combines Google's search technology with the categorization developed by the Open Directory Project and is available in 75 languages. Dodgeball is a networking service that helps coordinate location-based social interactions between mobile users. Google Finance offers quick and easy access to business and financial information about mutual funds and public and private companies. Features include interactive charts with corresponding news stories; company search by name or ticker symbol; news articles grouped by topic from Google News; blog posts from across the web via Google Blog Search; on-topic discussion groups; and easy-to-use portfolios to track your financial information. Froogle is Google's shopping search engine. Using the power of Google search technology, Froogle can help shoppers find the items they want, both online and in nearby stores. Froogle users can sort results by price or store location, see product and merchant reviews, specify a desired price range, and view photos. Froogle accepts data feeds directly from merchants to ensure that product information is up-to-date and accurate. Because we do not charge merchants for inclusion in Froogle, our users can browse categories or conduct searches with confidence that the results we provide are relevant and unbiased. As with many Google products, Froogle displays relevant advertising separately from search results. Gmail is Google's free webmail service. It comes with more than 2,600 megabytes (and increasing every day) of free storage and built-in Google search technology. Because of its capacity and search capabilities, users don't need to stay ahead of webmail storage limitations, unearth messages buried in folders, or worry about taming an unruly inbox. Gmail users can keep all of their important messages, files and pictures in a single place, and search them quickly and easily to find whatever they're looking for. Gmail also offers a new way of viewing messages as part of conversations. And Gmail's powerful spam filtering eliminates spam from one's daily routine. Gmail is currently available in 38 different languages, and offers virus protection, customizable from-addresses, and free automatic forwarding and POP access. It is also accessible for free on web-enabled mobile phones and devices. Gmail is in beta and is available by invitation or by receiving an invitation code to your mobile phone. Use Google Groups to easily create your
own mailing or announcement lists and public discussions in just minutes.
Google Groups also makes it easier to read and participate in discussions,
because all the replies to an initial post are gathered on one page.
You can bookmark topics you're interested in, and have new replies
to that topic delivered to your inbox. Each Google Group also has its
own Google-fast search, making it easy to locate discussions in the
archive. And as always, only relevant text ads are displayed within
Google Groups. It's also home to the entire Usenet archive (dating
back to 1981), so users can search, read and browse 845 million posted
messages on virtually any topic within Google Groups. Google Image Search is our searchable index of billions of images found across the web. To extend its usefulness, we offer advanced features such as searching by image size, format and coloration and restricting searches to specific web sites or domains. Google Labs is our playground for our engineers and for adventurous Google users. On Google Labs, we post product prototypes and solicit feedback on how the technology could be used or improved. Google Labs projects include:
Google Local enables users to find relevant local information based on zip codes, cities or specific addresses. Google Local results include neighborhood business listings, addresses, phone numbers, relevant web sites, maps and directions. Google Maps shows you where you want to go, and tells you what you'll find when you get there. Our dynamic, interactive maps are draggable (no clicking and waiting for graphics to reload when you want to view an adjacent area). Use your mouse or the directional arrows to pan in any direction to see areas off screen. Or type in the name of a region or neighborhood to see any part of it as easily as you do with a standard street map. Check out the satellite view at the top right corner of the Google Maps page to see satellite and aerial images of your location. In this view you can also zoom in, out, or pan in any direction. (You won't experience any long reload times when you drag images in the satellite view, either.) Google Mobile products are built specifically for phones and mobile devices, placing the information you need in the palm of your hand. Find what you need at any time, and from anywhere, using these Google Mobile products:
Google News gathers information from nearly
10,000 news sources worldwide and presents news stories in a searchable
format within minutes of their publication on the web. The leading stories
are presented as headlines on the Google News home page. These headlines
are selected for display entirely by a computer algorithm, without regard
to political viewpoint or ideology. Google News uses an automated process
to pull together related headlines, which enables people to see many different
viewpoints on the same story. Topics are updated continuously throughout
the day and readers can view new stories by checking the Google News website,
subscribing to Google News Alerts via email, or activating an RSS or Atom
feed. Currently, the Google News service is tailored to 22 international
audiences.
Available on Google Labs, the personalized
homepage gives users immediate, at-a-glance access to a Google homepage
they build themselves. Users can drag and drop the functionality of
Gmail and Google News, bookmarks, weather forecasts, movie showtimes,
stock quotes, plus feeds from across the web. The personalized homepage
does not replace the original Google homepage; users can switch between
them by clicking on "Classic Home" or "Personalized Home." Personalized Home for mobile devices The mobile version of Google Personalized Home collects and displays the same content available in the web version, such as your Gmail inbox, stock quotes, news headlines, weather reports, movie showtimes, and RSS or Atom feeds offered by other sites, so you can select and customize the content you want to receive. Google Personalized Home for mobile aggregates your content into a single easy-to-read format designed for a small screen. Personalized Search orders Google search
results based on what is most relevant to an individual user. The Search
History feature of Personalized Search enables users to view and manage
their history of searches and which results they've clicked on. Over
time, this information personalizes future searches by bringing results
closer to the top when it's clear they are the most relevant. Google Reader is a web-based feed reader
that makes it easy to find and subscribe to online feeds. With the
Reader, users can organize and stay current with the ever-increasing
amount of web information they consume every day. Google Reader features
a clean, easy-to-use interface and includes a comprehensive feed finder,
multimedia feed displays, and algorithms that can assist users by automatically
prioritizing content according to their interests. Google Reader also
has easy sharing capabilities with email and "blog this" features. Use Google Scholar to find scholarly literature (peer-reviewed papers, theses, preprints, abstracts, technical reports) from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. As with Google web search, Google Scholar presents search results in order of relevance to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online, so search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications. Google's free webmaster tools help to make sites more Google-friendly. These easy-to-use tools enable webmasters to see Google's view of their site, diagnose problems, and share information with us in order to improve the visibility of their sites in Google search results.
Within this suite of webmaster tools, there is still a product called Sitemaps that enables webmasters to upload a sitemap file and give Google detailed info about their sites.
Use Google to search within specific topics. Our Public Service Search offers educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide free SiteSearch. Hundreds of universities offer our University Search, which can be used to search for admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news. Other special searches include: U.S. Government, Linux, BSD, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft. This video search service enables users to discover all kinds of interesting videos produced by professionals and enthusiasts. Within Google Video lies the Google Video store, the first open video marketplace where viewers can buy and rent a wide range of video content from major television networks, cable programmers, independent producers, filmmakers and individual creators. This content is viewable using the Google video player. In addition to providing easy access to billions of web pages, we have integrated special features into Google Web Search to help people find exactly what they are looking for on the web. The Google.com search experience also includes:
In addition to providing easy access to billions of web pages, Google has many special features to help users find exactly what they're looking for. These include searches for word definitions, file types, movies, book ISBN numbers, weather, numbers, calculations, package tracking, and many others.
Google's web analytics service enables advertisers and publishers to make their marketing campaigns more efficient and their websites more effective. Advertisers can increase their advertising ROI by optimizing online marketing campaigns, tracking referral sources, improving web design and content, and identifying visitor preferences. The intuitive interface of Google Analytics makes it easy to segment customers, identify top performing ad campaigns, and understand user preferences. Blogger is a leading web-based publishing
tool that gives people the ability to publish to the web instantly
using weblogs, or "blogs." Blogs are web pages usually made up of short,
informal, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically.
Blogs can facilitate communications among small groups or to a worldwide
audience in a way that is simpler and easier to follow than traditional
email or discussion forums. Google Calendar is a free web-based calendar service that makes it easier to keep all the calendar information important to you in one place, including calendars shared by friends and groups. Adding your own events is easy, and you can also import them from other applications you use. Handy event reminders, including text messages sent to your phone, help you keep track of everything that's on your agenda. Google Calendar also enables you share your own calendar information with others, whether you want to send party invitations to friends, or if you want to publicize events from your website. And Google Calendar uses open standards like iCal and XML, so it plays nicely with many other calendar formats. Developers outside of Google who are interested in Google-related development projects can visit this site for our free source code and lists of our API services. Open Source interests a lot of Google developers, so this program is a good way to prepare code for release and maintenance. Google engineers pick the programs in active development that we publish here. By releasing these tools, we will be able to release more software that relies on them later. Our first Google Code projects are all current, actively maintained code directly from our repositories, and as we improve them, those improvements will be merged into the free code base. Google Desktop is a free client application that allows you to easily search and personalize your computer. It provides full text search over email, files, music, photos, chats, web pages that you've viewed, and more. By making your computers searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files. Google Desktop also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar and Google Gadgets, visually appealing mini-applications that can display anything from your new email to the local weather forecast to personalized news. With Google Desktop, you get personalized information when you want it, right on your desktop. Google Earth is the only program
that can deliver a 3D digital model of the entire earth via the
Internet. Its groundbreaking EarthStream technology combines
advanced 3D graphics and network streaming innovations in a high
performance system that runs on standard PCs and commodity servers.
Users can point and zoom to anyplace on the planet. Satellite
images and local facts zoom into view, enhanced by Google search
to show local points of interest and facts. Intuitive to use,
Google Earth solutions enable anyone to manipulate a rich map
of the earth composed of imagery and feature information. Hello is a program for sharing digital pictures with friends using an instant messenger program. You don't have to wait for huge email attachments to download or upload your pictures to a public website. Hello is designed to let you send high-quality pictures instantly and securely over any speed connection, even dialup. And Hello automatically encrypts all your pictures and chat before sending, so it's safer and more secure than email. With Hello's file sharing technology, they only have to download high quality versions of the ones they really like. Everything else comes in at a smaller size, optimized for viewing on-screen. Google Maps for mobile enables you to
search for and find local hangouts and businesses using directions,
maps and satellite imagery directly from your phone. This free application
makes city sampling, route finding, or getting your bearings on the
go informative and visually engaging. Google Notebook is a free browser tool that makes web research of all kinds from planning a vacation to comparison shopping to purchasing a car easier and more efficient. It enables users to collect clips of web content in an online Notebook without ever leaving the web page they're on. Users can then add notes to their clippings, organize their notebooks into sections, and make their notebooks public for other users to view on the Google Notebook search page. Google Pack is a free collection of essential software to help you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more. It's a hassle-free way to enhance your computer with useful programs from Google and other companies like Adobe and Symantec. You can download and install the entire Google Pack in just a few clicks. And the included Google Updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date. Using Google, you can search for web content in any of 35 languages, or by country domain (71 at last count; we keep adding them). You can also translate text to and from several languages, translate a web page by submitting a URL. We also provide links to Google.com in more than 100 languages and links to all of the current Google country domains. Picasa is free downloadable software from Google that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Each time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized. Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures send up to 10MB of photos from Picasa using your Gmail account, print at home, make gift CDs, and even put pictures on your own blog. Google Talk is a free and easy way to make voice calls and send instant messages. This downloadable Windows application makes real-time communications simple and intuitive. Calls are made through your computer using the latest voice technology. All you need is an Internet connection, a microphone and a speaker. Google Talk works with any computer speaker and microphone many laptops today have these built-in and with wired and wireless headsets and USB phones. After downloading Google Talk, users sign in with their with Gmail usernames, and can invite friends to download Google Talk so they can talk to each other for free. The Google Toolbar is a free download that adds a Google search box to your web browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer). The Toolbar also includes innovative features that make browsing more efficient, such as a web form filler, spellchecker, word translator, and pop-up blocker (for IE).
Google Toolbar Reviewer's Guide (PDF - 670KB)
Google's Enterprise division brings Google technology
to companies and organizations. The Google Mini is a hardware and software search appliance that delivers the power and productivity of Google search across a small or medium-sized business or organization's documents and websites. The Mini can index and search up to 100,000 documents. It works with more than 220 file formats including HTML, PDF and Microsoft Office. It can be set up in under an hour and requires minimal ongoing administration. The Google Mini costs $2,995 and includes hardware, software, one year of technical support and a product replacement guarantee. Google Desktop Search for Enterprise enables companies to leverage the power of Google's popular desktop search application. Employees can search across the content on their hard drives email, computer files, Lotus Notes, chats, and the web pages they've viewed, and Google Desktop Search for Enterprise enables IT administrators to centrally control user features and preferences and easily deploy to any number of users. It also integrates with the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini to provide a unified search interface across locally stored content, shared corporate content and the world-wide web. Best of all, Google Desktop Search for Enterprise is a free downloadable application. An optional premium support package is available. |
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