Customer Service in the Early Days of Google

Many people complain that Google doesn't offer customer support for most of its services and it's really difficult to receive an email from Google that actually answers your questions. Here's a story from the book "I'm Feeling Lucky", written by the former Google employee Douglas Edwards. Back in 2000, Max Erdstein was Google's sole customer service rep and he could only use a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Outlook.

Max never envisioned customer service becoming an omnivorous blob consuming all his time, but soon he found himself responding robotically to more than a thousand emails a day from users around the world. Crushed under the load, he could do little than succinctly reply, "Thanks! Keep on Googling!" Non-English emails presented the biggest problem. We had no idea if people wanted to praise us or harangue us. We tried using off-the-web translation software, but it left us more confused than when we began.

Meanwhile, there were rumblings from sales VP Omid that supporting advertisers and search-services customers should be a higher priority. Could Max help with that, too? After all, unlike users, these people were actually paying us. Max was emptying an ocean with a teaspoon. As the backlog of unanswered emails began to swell, Sergey offered a useful perspective. "Why do you need to answer user email anyway?" he wanted to know.

To Sergey's thinking, responding to user questions was inefficient. If they wrote us about problems with Google, that was useful information to have. We should note the problems and fix them. That would make the users happier than if we wasted time explaining to them that we were working on the bugs. If users sent us compliments, we didn't need to write back because they already liked us. So really, wouldn't it be better not to respond at all? Or at best, maybe write some code to generate random replies that would be fine in most cases?

Google Image Search Shows More Information About Photos

Google's image search engine started to show additional information about photos after clicking the results. The landing page's sidebar includes EXIF data: camera, settings, focal length, flash usage and exposure bias.

"Additional details are found from within the image file, often saved there by the digital camera that took the picture or the application that generated the image. This data can also be manually added or changed after the image has been created. Google doesn't create or change this data in images created by others. The data is saved using the Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) specification and can include details about the type of camera that took the image, the camera settings (like aperture, focal length, exposure length, and flash settings), and the copyright and usage rights associated with the image by the person who created or edited the image," explains Google.

Another change is that you can click "more sizes" for other versions of the image and "similar images" for visually related images. The sidebar also includes the search result's snippet.


The sidebar can also include a list of related searches, which offer a lot of information about the image and help you find similar images:


Google should also add links to the previous and the next search result so that you don't have to go back to the list of results.

Google Maps Removes Third-Party Reviews

Google Places pages have been updated to use the new Google+ interface, but the biggest change is that Google dropped the reviews from third-party sites like Yelp, Menupages or Booking.com, while only relying on the reviews from Google users. "Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we've heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that've been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we're continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe," explains Google.

To encourage users to share their feedback and improve place pages, Google added a button for uploading photos and made the button for writing reviews more prominent. It's clear that Google Maps will become even more social and will integrate with Google+, so the reviews from your social circles will be more relevant and will help you find a nice restaurant or a fancy hotel.


While Google Hotpot added a lot of new reviews from Google users, there are still many local business that don't have reviews. What's more, the reviews from Google users are usually short, superficial and often they only include a rating.


Search Engine Roundtable speculates that Google removed third-party reviews because of Yelp's complaints. "We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users' review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google's position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don't want them to use our reviews on Places," said Yelp's CEO. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Yelp, Google launched Places, Hotpot and made Google Maps results more prominent in the list of Web search results. Yelp felt that its reviews improved a competing service and asked Google to remove Yelp reviews from Google Places. Google decided that it's a good idea to blackmail Yelp and tie the Web search index with the Places reviews (Google News has a different policy and the same goes for Product Search). A such a terrible practice made Google look like a huge company that used its power to crush rising startups.

TechCrunch found that "Yelp made a presentation to a roomful of state attorneys general at the Conference of Western Attorneys General about regulatory issues in search. On that panel was Vince Sollitto, VP of Giverment Affairs for Yelp, along with Dana Wagner, a Google lawyer, and well-known antitrust attorney Gary Reback. Yelp's presentation was titled 'Google Places: A Threat To Innovation and Competition.' The basic argument was that Google strong-armed review websites into providing their content for free, and then gave their own Places product preferential treatment in search."

Instead of removing the reviews from Yelp, Google yanked all third-party reviews and made Google Places less useful. There are still links to other review sites and there's still a small excerpt from a review in the list of search results, but Google Maps is no longer a comprehensive source of reviews, while Bing Maps looks more attractive. Google Maps ratings no longer use data from third-party reviews, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that Google still uses these reviews to rank results.

Google Makes Money from Chromebooks

While many people think there's a lot of overlap between Android and Chrome OS, the products don't have a lot in common. Chrome OS is a proprietary operating system based on an open-source project and OEMs can't tweak it or add new features. Just like for Nexus One and Nexus S, you get all of the updates from Google. Another difference is that Chrome OS is constantly updated and you can even switch to the beta or the dev channel to try the latest features. Chrome OS has an automatic update feature, so that Chromebooks run the latest version of the operating system.

Google's CFO, Patrick Pichette, mentioned another difference between Android and Chrome OS: "Google is making some money from companies buying computers that run the Chrome operating system." Google came up with an innovative subscription model for businesses and schools. Instead of paying for the hardware, organizations can pay $20-$33/device/month and get a notebook, enterprise support, new devices every 3 years or even more often, a Web-based central management console, integration with Google Apps. While enterprise Chromebooks are a lot more expensive than the regular Chromebooks available at Amazon or Best Buy, Google says that the total cost of ownership of a notebook can be reduced by up to 70%. "Chromebooks and the management console automate or eliminate many common, time-intensive IT tasks like machine image creation, application distribution, patching, and upgrades. Additionally, there is no need to purchase licenses for anti-virus, data encryption or data back-up software."

Like Android, Chrome OS also encourages people to use Google's services more often. "People search more when they use the Chrome browser or Android phones, which increases Google's core business," says Patrick Pichette. Android will also offer additional revenue opportunities. "Nonsearch revenue will eventually arrive for Android as it combines Google Maps, mobile payments with Google Wallet and daily deals with Google Offers."

When we have products that get resounding user and consumer success and that are growing in the hundreds of millions we don't worry. The only question is when and how will we monetize. Everybody's all nervous about the fact it's been 36 months since Android has launched and you only have search (revenue). That's the criticism I hear. The questions that are asked are so short-termish. That's just not the way that Google thinks.

For now, Chromebooks are the perfect Google Apps "thin clients", while Android devices have so many sensors that help you explore the world and make Web services a lot more useful when you are on the go.

Updated Interface for Google News

Google News is the latest Google service that gets a new design consistent with Google+. There's a new color scheme, more white space, a new header and two buttons that replace the customization links.

It's strange to see the label-less blue search button next to the "search the Web" button. Gmail's new interface uses two buttons that are easier to differentiate, instead of confusing users. There's a lot of wasted space at the top of the page and the two new buttons are too prominent, especially if you consider that you'll not use them very often.


In a recent Google+ post, Larry Page said that Google has launched a "beautiful, consistent and simpler design". He continued: "Google+ is also a great example of another focus of mine - beautiful products that are simple and intuitive to use and was actually was one of the first products to contain our new visual redesign." A New York Times blog post quotes Patrick Pichette, Google's CFO, who concludes that "there was just too much clutter. Larry in the last 90 days basically said, 'Hey, it's just time to re-shift. Don't lose any insights into the deep engineering that we drive, but let's make sure we don't lose focus on the ease of use."

{ Thanks, Anthony. }

Google Docs Lets You Upload 10GB Files

Scott Johnston, Product Manager at Google, announced that Google Docs increased the maximum file size from 1GB to 10GB. That's a really good news, but it's surprising to see that Google Docs only offers 1GB of free storage.

After all, Chromebook users are supposed to store their files online and there are many services that offer more free storage than Google Docs: from Dropbox (2GB) and Box.net (5GB) to Amazon Cloud Drive (5GB) and Microsoft SkyDrive (25GB). While you can buy 20GB of storage for $5/year, it's obvious that more people would upload their files to Google Docs if the service offered at least 20GB of storage for free. Releasing a sync software like Music Manager would make it easier to upload files and to access them from any computer.

Another idea would be to separate online storage from Google Docs apps, so that you can upload Microsoft Word documents and open them using Google's word processing app, but without irreversibly associating them with the app. This way, you could upload files and open them using multiple applications, for example: Google Docs, Zoho Writer and Microsoft Word's Web App.


Image by Scott (inspired by Hyperbole and a Half).

Google Toolbar for Firefox Has Been Discontinued

Another Google product bites the dust. This time it's a popular add-on: Google Toolbar for Firefox. Many users were surprised to see that Google hasn't updated the toolbar for Firefox 5, even though it wasn't a difficult task. After enabling the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, most of the features worked well in Firefox 5.

It turns out that Google no longer wants to update Google Toolbar for Firefox, but it doesn't admit that the product has been discontinued.

"Google Toolbar for Firefox is compatible with Firefox version 4 or older. If you use Firefox version 5 or newer, you won't be able to use Google Toolbar."


Google suggests a long list of add-ons that could replace Google Toolbar's features, but the suggestions are too generic. For example, Google links to the search results for [bookmarks sync] or [language translate] in the Firefox add-ons gallery.

A Google blog post offers an explanation: "many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser" and thanks the loyal users. That's also true for the IE toolbar, but there are many useful features that aren't included in the browser: auto-translation (a built-in Chrome feature), Google Bookmarks integration, using Google Docs to open documents, smart spell-checking using an online service, highlighting search terms, suggestions for navigation errors (another built-in Chrome feature), custom buttons and gadgets.

You probably remember that Google Toolbar for Firefox was released in 2005, five years after the Internet Explorer version. At that time, Firefox users who wanted to install a Google Toolbar with PageRank support could try an unofficial extension called Googlebar. Maybe that extension will be resurrected, now that Google Toolbar for Firefox is no longer available. Releasing some of the source code under an open-source license would be helpful.

For now, Google Toolbar still works in the latest Firefox releases if you install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter first and restart the browser. Here's Google Toolbar in Firefox 7 Alpha 2 (Aurora):


Last year, Microsoft's Bing Bar dropped support for Firefox and became an Internet Explorer-only add-on, just like Google Toolbar. Bing Bar is powered by Silverlight, a software for running rich internet applications. A few months ago, Google tested a new Google Toolbar powered by Chrome, but only for Internet Explorer. It's likely that the new toolbar didn't work well in Firefox, so Google decided to only offer an Internet Explorer version.

{ Thanks, Colar. }

No More Google Labs

Google's blog announced a surprising decision: Google Labs will be closed. It's not April Fools' Day, so it can't be a hoax.

"While we've learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead. In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments — in others we'll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market," explains Google.

It's all about focus and prioritization, the same reasons why Google Health and Powermeter were discontinued last month. Google's CEO, Larry Page, says that Google will focus on the core products (search and ads), on the products that "enjoy high consumer success" (YouTube, Chrome, Android) and on some new products (Google+, Commerce, Local).


Google was all about experimentation and launching new projects early to get feedback and iterate. Google Labs was the place where many of the most important Google services started: iGoogle, Google Maps, Personalized Search, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Groups. Right now, there are 56 Google Labs products and many of them are really useful: Google Body Browser, Google Scribe, Fast Flip, Android App Inventor, Aardvark, Google Goggles, Google Moderator, Google Code Search.

While Gmail Labs, Google Maps Labs, TestTube will continue to exist, it's sad to see that the service that showcased Google's latest innovations will disappear.

Google Directory, No Longer Available

Google Directory was the second Google service launched, after the Web search engine. It was released in 2000 to compete with Yahoo Directory, the most popular Web directory at that time. Google used data from Netscape's Open Directory Project, but it added an innovative feature: automatically ranking results.


Here's an excerpt from an article written by Danny Sullivan back in April 2000. "Google is applying link analysis in a new way, to the human powered information of the Open Directory. All I can say is hurray! I've been chanting for an end to the tyranny of the alphabet when it comes to directory listings for some time. Why should sites that begin with an A appear at the top of list, oppressing better quality sites that may simply begin with a letter further down in the alphabet? In many cases, this offers no help to the searcher."

Directories were useful at that time because there weren't too many high-quality sites and reviewers could keep up with the growth of the Web. Now that the Web has a lot more than a trillion pages, it's impossible to maintain a directory, so algorithmic search engines are the only ones that can scale.

Now Google Directory is no longer available. "We believe that Web Search is the fastest way to find the information you need on the web," says Google.


Google Directory has been irrelevant for many years and very few Google domains still included the service in the navigation bar. Last year, Google dropped the search feature and not many people noticed.

{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Google+ App for iPhone

Google's iPhone app for Google+ has been finally approved by Apple and it's the top free app in the US App Store. For some reason, the app is not compatible with iPod Touches and iPads, so it only works if you have an iPhone.

Google+ for iPhone has most of the features of the Android app, but it doesn't support instant uploads and lacks the advanced settings from the Android app.


The app has been criticized for the non-standard interface. "Google+ app uses left-right swiping to change views in your 'Stream'. I see three: Incoming, Circles, and Nearby. The idiomatic iOS design for this would be a tab controller at the bottom with three tabs, one for each view," says John Gruber.


Other users complain that they need an invitation to use Google+ and a surprising number of people say that the app doesn't work well in iOS 5, which is still in beta and can only be installed by developers, at least officially. This shows that many of the 18 million Google+ users are developers and tech enthusiasts.

Google's Yellow Malware Warning Box

Google started to show a yellow warning box at the top of the search results pages if the computer is likely to be infected with malware that changes Web pages, inserts ads and sends users to other pages to download more malware.


"Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software (...) that causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called proxies," explains Google.

Showing a warning message is not a foolproof idea, since malicious software could easily remove it or use it to install more malware. Google links to a page titled "Your computer appears to be infected", which suggests to install an antivirus software and perform a system scan. The page doesn't suggest to install a different operating system or to buy a Chromebook.

"Some forms of malicious software will alter your computer settings to redirect some or all of your traffic through a proxy controlled by the attacker. When you use Google, the proxy forwards your query to the real Google servers to fetch the search results. If our system detects that a search came through one of these proxies, we display the warning," informs Google.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

A New Look for Google Translate

Google Translate is the latest Google service with a new design based on Google+. Since Google Translate's interface is simple, there aren't many changes: a new grey header, updated buttons and drop-downs.


"We're working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel. The way people use and experience the web is evolving, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and consistent online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on," explained Google last month.

After launching a new interface for Google Search, Google created two themes that preview Gmail's new design and started to test Google Calendar's new UI and Blogger's new UI. Up next: Google Docs, Google Sites, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader and probably other services.

{ Thanks, Kon. }

Multiple "Did You Mean" Suggestions

Google's spell checker has always returned a single suggestion when it was very likely that your query was misspelled. In many cases, Google now returns the results for the corrected query and shows a message above the results: "Showing results for [corrected query]. Search instead for [original query]".

Google started to show a "did you mean" message even for queries that are too ambiguous to be corrected automatically. For example, if you search for [efrazin], a query that returns a small number of results, Google suggests four other similar keywords that are more popular, but the list doesn't include [e. frazin].


The new feature is a clever way to combine spell checking with related searches and show additional suggestions for weird queries that are likely to be misspelled. Even if the suggestions aren't always useful, it's a low-risk feature and you won't see too often.

Google Music Lyrics

Google Music Lyrics is a Greasemonkey script that adds a lyrics panel to Google Music. It only works in Firefox and there's a single lyrics provider: SongLyrics.com.


The lyrics are cached so that they're displayed instantly the next time you play the same song. You can also edit the lyrics and the changes are saved using HTML5 local storage. To hide the panel, click the title.

Chris Hendry, who developed the script, plans to add other lyrics providers, allow users to import and export lyrics and to make the script work in Google Chrome.

Find Recent Images in Google Image Search

Google Image Search added a filter that lets you restrict the results to the pages created in the past week. Just click "past week" in the left sidebar and you'll see a list of recent images that include labels like "20 hours ago" or "5 days ago" to show how recent they are. Google's image search engine shows the same labels even if you don't restrict the results to recent images.


The interface doesn't let you customize the date range, but you can edit the URL and replace "qdr:w" with "qdr:h" (past hour), "qdr:h20" (past 20 hours), "qdr:d" (past 24 hours), "qdr:d2" (past 2 days), "qdr:w2" (past 2 weeks), "qdr:m" (past month), "qdr:y" (past year). Another trick you can try is to type your query in Google Web Search, use the date filters from the sidebar and then click "Images" in the vertical menu. Custom date ranges don't work in Image Search yet.

Here are some examples: Beijing photos from the past year, wedding photos from the past month, Android-related images from the past 2 weeks, Tour de France photos from the past week. It's important to keep in mind that the photos may not be so recent, but they're included in recent articles, blog posts and other Web pages.

The nice thing about the "recent images" filter is that you can combine it with other advanced filters. You can sort the images by subject and restrict the results to recent images, find images that have a certain size or a predominant color and they were uploaded in the past year, find recent Creative Commons images or generate a list of recent images from a site (e.g.: cnn.com).