New Google Favicon

Many people noticed a small change: Google has a new favicon. A favicon is a small image that is generally used to reflect the identity of a web site. You can find it in the address bar, in your browser's tabs, in the list of bookmarks or in some feed readers like Bloglines.

Google's favicon is hosted at google.com/favicon.ico and it's a 16x16 pixels image, a standard size for favicons. Google replaced the upper-case "G" in blue border, green and red borders with a lower-case purple "g" in a rounded corner rectangle.


The first time when I saw the new favicon at Google Image Search, I thought there was something wrong with my browser's cache or I typed an incorrect address. Google's new favicon is less cheerful and comforting, but it makes a lot of sense: the small g is a symbol for infinity (∞). A googol (10¹⁰⁰) is just a poor approximation for the huge amount of information that needs to be indexed, organized and made useful by Google.


{ Thanks for the tip, Louis, John and Aleksandr. }

Update: If you want the old favicon back, try this Greasemonkey script (requires Greasemonkey for Firefox, Opera or a userscript plug-in for other browsers).

Update 2: Search Engine Land has an official position from Google. "We recognized there was a need for a Google icon that would better work across multiple applications including web, mobile and client applications. We felt the small 'g' had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it's simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward."

Update 3: Google says this is not the final favicon. "We tried in total more than 300 permutations [some of them are displayed below]. It was much harder than we thought at first. We wanted something distinctive and noticeable, so we aimed toward transparency or semi-transparency, so the image would have a more distinctive noticeable shape than just a block. We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn't date itself." If you have some suggestions for Google's favicon, send them here.


Update: The favicon was updated in January 2009.

Gmail Labs?

Google pre-announced a mysterious new feature for Gmail. "On Thursday, June 5th we're going to be launching a new Gmail feature that we like to think of as a next evolution of 20% time. It's a change in our development process and in the way users will be able to influence Gmail's design."

20% time is one of the many peculiar things about Google. "The 20 percent time is a well-known part of our philosophy here, enabling engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in our job descriptions. You can use the time to develop something new, or if you see something that's broken, you can use the time to fix it."

Google's engineers may work on many side-projects related to Gmail and this could be an opportunity for users to try them, send feedback or influence which features should be further developed and added to Gmail. It's not clear if that's the right interpretation for Google's intentionally-ambiguous text, but we'll find out next Thursday.

It might even match one of my predictions for this year: "Gmail will launch a Google Labs-like site with experimental features that could be added by those who are curious to see the next features before they are officially launched." Instead of releasing entirely new applications on Google Labs, it's more practical for Google to create mini-labs for each important service and expose experimental features that could be added or removed, like in Google Experimental Search.

Update (June 5th): TechCrunch covers Google's announcements. "At 6 pm PDT Gmail will launch Gmail labs under a Gmail tab - all users will have access to it. The first batch will have 13 features." Here are the features:

* a module for quick links (saved searches, important messages)
* superstars (additional star icons)
* pictures in Gmail chat
* fixed width font
* custom keyboard shortcuts
* mouse gestures
* random signature
* signature tweaks (places the signature before the quoted text)
* custom date format
* muzzle (hide the status of your contacts in Gmail chat)
* play Snake inside Gmail
* email addict (blocks the screen for 15 minutes)
* hide unread count

You'll be able to find them in a new tab from the Settings section. Probably the most useful features are: quick links, superstars and custom shortcuts. More about Gmail Labs in a future post.

Google App Engine, Open for Developers

Google announced that App Engine, the service that allows you to create web applications and host them on Google's servers, can be used without an invitation. Unfortunately, you need to verify your account by entering a code sent to your mobile phone.


The only programming language supported at the moment is Python. Google offers 500 MB of storage and enough bandwidth for 5 million pageviews per month for free, but in the future you'll be able to purchase more resources. Here are the expected prices, according to the App Engine Blog:

* $0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour
* $0.15 - $0.18 per GB-month of storage
* $0.11 - $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth
* $0.09 - $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth

For comparison, Amazon SimpleDB costs $0.14 per machine hour, $1.50 per GB-month of storage (8-10 times more than Google App Engine), $0.1 per GB incoming data transfer and $0.1-$0.17 per GB outgoing data transfer. Except for the storage cost, the pricing is somewhat similar to Amazon's offering, even if the services are quite different.

If you need ideas for an application, browse the gallery - you'll find a lot of simple apps for URL shortening, reading lists, unit conversion, time management or just for fun. You should also check Niall Kennedy's article about App Engine before reading the documentation.

"Google App Engine is a new and interesting solution for Python developers interested in adding features, not servers. Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars developing its custom infrastructure with 12-volt power supplies tapped into a hydro-electric dam next door and fat fiber pipes owned by local governments carrying requests and responses to their proper home. Google's physical infrastructure is vast array of highly optimized web machines, and we'll now be able to see how such infrastructure performs across more generic applications on App Engine," writes Niall.

{ Thank you, Tim. }

orkut Themes

When orkut doesn't borrow features from Facebook, it gets inspired by other Google services. This time, orkut added themes, but not all the users can see the new option. The themes should be familiar, since most of them were created for iGoogle. When you select a theme, only you and your friends can see it in your profile page.

The unofficial Orkut Plus blog has some Greasemonkey scripts that could be used to see the new themes if the feature is not yet enabled in your account. If you notice a link in the header that lets you "change themes", then you have the new feature.

Since iGoogle's themes are really appreciated by users, maybe it makes sense to add themes to all Google services and change them from a central location.


{ Thanks, V-render Studio. }

Google Earth Browser Plugin

Google Earth can now be used from a browser, without having to install the full application. Instead of the application, you need to install a plug-in that only works in Firefox and Internet Explorer 6/7 on Windows.

Google also launched an JavaScript API that lets you interact with the globe, draw markers, add layers or integrate with Google Maps. "The Google Earth Plug-in and its APIs let you embed the full power of Google Earth and its 3D rendering capabilities into your web pages." Google LatLong blog announced that each Google Maps mashup can take advantage of the new 3D view by adding a single line of code. "Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you'll build the next great geo-based 3D application, and change how we view the world."

The samples look pretty promising, but I find it hard to understand why Google didn't use the API to create a better experience and bring more features from Google Earth (the search box, the list of overlays, the navigation controls) in a single interface.


Before downloading the plugin, please note that Google installs it in Firefox and Internet Explorer, along with a system service called "Google Update Service". The plug-in uses a lot of memory (around 100 MB just for loading the initial view and 300 MB for the Monster Milktruck demo) and, for each embedded object, you're running an instance of the Google Earth application.

Find the Font from a Logo

WhatTheFont is a site that lets you upload a logo or any other image that contains text and shows you a list of fonts that are likely to be used in that image. WhatTheFont supports some common image formats like GIF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, but you can't upload images bigger than 360 x 275 pixels.

After uploading an image, you may need to enter the corresponding letters from the text, since the system can't always detect them accurately. In the example below, the site recognized the font used in Google's logo: Catull.


The site seems to be pretty old, but I couldn't find a similar online font recognition system. Identifont asks you some question about the font's appearance, so it's more difficult to use, while FontExpert only handles individual characters.

{ via Daring Fireball }

Google Street View Cars in Spain

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo (English translation) reports that Google's Street View cars have been spotted in many Spanish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona. Apparently, the local police wasn't very impressed and Google was fined for parking in a restricted area.


There's even a custom Google Map that includes many locations where Google's cars were spotted in Spain and Google Blogoscoped points to a video that shows a Street View car on the streets of Seville.


Google will add Street View imagery for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other European countries in the coming months.

{ Thanks, wkh wkh. }

Google Hosts Popular JavaScript Libraries

If you've ever wanted to use a JavaScript library like script.aculo.us, Prototype, jQuery or Dojo, but you couldn't upload its files to a site or you found it difficult to manage all the different versions, Google hosts them for you.

"The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the Google AJAX API Loader's google.load() method, your application has high speed, globally available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries. (...) The AJAX Libraries API takes the pain out of developing mashups in JavaScript while using a collection of libraries. We take the pain out of hosting the libraries, correctly setting cache headers, staying up to date with the most recent bug fixes".

In addition to Google's APIs for search, maps, feeds and translations, you can now access AJAX libraries that add useful features like drag-and-drop, controls, animations or easier DOM manipulation. You can use Google as a fast proxy, but Google also caches the files related to iGoogle gadgets, the feeds that are served by Google Reader, and we should expect to see more content that can be accessed from Google faster and more reliably. In the future, Google could provide even more tools for a site: stats, monetization, search are useful, but what about using an unified Google API that lets you find facts, get spelling corrections, add ratings and forms, store data, add social features and code applications that run on Google's platform?

Google Shows Additional Information for Forums

After displaying the published date for search results, Google experiments with showing more information about forum threads. Below the title, there's a new line with the following format:

Discussion forum: number of posts - number of authors - date of the first post


The extended snippet categorizes the search result and indicates its potential usefulness: for example, a thread that has a single post or a single author is not very useful.

Other search results that include special metadata:

* videos show a thumbnail, the duration and sometimes the average rating (on a related note, Google no longer lets you play videos inline)


* Google Books results show the author, the published date, an important category and the number of pages

Google slowly categorizes the documents from its index and starts to show additional information relevant for each category. We can expect to see extended snippets for blogs, news sites, shopping sites, scholar papers and even a way to restrict the results to a certain category. An experiment from last year grouped the search results in different categories: references, reviews, stores etc.

For now, the extended snippet for discussion boards is not live for everyone, but you can change your Google cookie to be a part of the experiment.

Google Video's Player Detached from Search Results

The default view for Google Video, TV view, has been updated and you can now search for videos without interrupting the video that is already playing. You can go to the next page of results or reformulate your query, while still watching a video.

You'll also notice that Google Video can play videos inline not only from Google's sites, but from many other popular video sites (some notable exceptions: AOL Video, MySpace, Yahoo Video).


Google Video started by close-captioning TV shows, then moved to hosting videos, searching videos on the web and now the natural evolution is to come full circle back to close-captioning videos. Maybe in the future Google Video will bring back playlists and we'll be able to watch a selection of videos, like in YouTube Fast Search.

The Importance of Being Included in Google's Index

Last Friday, Google Analytics reported a surprisingly small number of visitors for this blog. According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google removed from the search results all the blogs hosted at blogspot.com and some of the .info domains for about 8 hours. It probably was an accident or a web spam filter that learns from my posts.


Many sites receives most of the traffic from search engines (especially from Google). Ryan Stewart's blog has been delisted from Google and he describes the consequences.

Yesterday was one of the scariest days I've had in a long time and it put in total perspective the power that Google wields. (...) I was working on a blog post and was searching for something I'd written before so that I could reference it. Instead of using my blog's search, I of course used Google's site feature, like I always do. Only this time, I got nothing. (...) I was confused, angry, and I felt completely helpless. Everyone uses Google. It was a big referrer to my blog and when I posted tips and tricks for Flash/Flex/AIR I did so knowing that someone could Google the problem and find my blog.

In his case, it wasn't Google's fault. "It turns out that Ryan's blog had been hacked, and Google does remove hacked sites from our index to protect our users," explains Matt Cutts. But whether a site is removed from Google's index accidentally or on purpose, it's interesting to quantify the importance of a popular search engine like Google for both users and publishers.

Microsoft Thinks Short Term

I was a little surprised to see that Microsoft decided to end the book scanning initiative and close its book search engine. But I was even more surprised to read the motivation:

"Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers."

In other words, the book search engine didn't make enough money and Microsoft decided it's better to focus on areas that are more profitable. Instead of improving their search engine with valuable content from books and offering better search results, Microsoft chose to make decisions based on the short-term profits.

This is also visible in the Cashback offering: "Microsoft Live Search cashback is The Search That Pays You Back. Find great deals on millions of products from hundreds of brand name stores that you know and trust. You will be able to earn cashback savings based on a percentage of the product price. Your savings will be paid to you via your choice of a deposit to your PayPal account, direct deposit to your bank account, or a check in the mail."

Microsoft hopes to attract more search users, but this will probably work in the short term. People will only go to Live Search for the rebates and they'll return to Google to find information on the web. If you pay your users and define your service as "The Search That Pays You Back", your brand's value diminishes because the search should pay off through its own merits.


Google has a long-term strategy for its search engine and for the other services. "Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near term financial returns are not obvious. For example, we make our services as widely available as we can by supporting over 90 languages and by providing most services for free," wrote Google's founders in the IPO letter.

To offer a compelling alternative to Google, you need to offer services that are more valuable to the user, even if there's no profit involved. Google thinks you first need to create a great service and then start to find the business model. Microsoft still has to work on building a great search engine, so discontinuing the book search engine is not a step in the right direction.