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Last week's launch of Google Chrome generated some discussion over the legal language in our new browser's terms of service (TOS). As we noted in a subsequent post on Google Chrome's terms of service:"... Under copyright law, Google needs what's called a "license" to display or transmit content. So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog's content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service."We've also some seen discussion on a few blogs about how our universal terms of service apply to other products, with some users worried that Google is trying to claim ownership of the content they generate. To be clear: our terms do not claim ownership of your content -- what you create is yours and remains yours. But in lawyer-speak, we need to ask for a 'license' (which basically means your permission) to display this content to the wider world when that's what you intend. This issue is not unique to Google; it applies to lots of other Internet companies that display and transmit user content. You can see some other terms of service here from Amazon, eBay, and Facebook.In some of our products, such as Gmail and Google Docs, we have included additional terms to make it clear that we do not claim ownership of the content. But even without those additional clarifications, we still wouldn't be claiming ownership of your content -- just a license that gives us your permission to use the content to provide the service. The additional terms are there to reassure our users that they still own their own content, even after giving us the permission we need to help them share and collaborate with others, whether via Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Google Docs, or other services.Because, in the end, that's what's most important: making sure you're comfortable using our services to share, publish, and store your stuff. We'll continue to look at our terms of service to make them as clear and user-friendly as possible, because at the end of the day if you're not comfortable, our products won't succeed -- and we know it.Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel

When I woke up at 4:00 AM in a dark field, after just a half hour of sleep, I wondered if I was crazy. When I put on my headlamp and running shoes for a six-mile run—my second of three runs that day—I knew that I was crazy. But I was happy about it because I knew that my teammates were just as crazy. I was running Hood to Coast with the Google relay team. That's a 197-mile Oregon race that starts at Mount Hood, travels through Portland, and finishes on the beach in the town of Seaside. More than 1000 teams participate in the race, with 12 runners on each team running three legs each. The 12 runners on our team were all Googlers from different parts of the company: AdSense, AdWords, Google.org, Engineering, Search and Analytics, Search Quality, and more. We had runners from a number of offices: Cambridge, Chicago, Mountain View, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle . Many of us had run Hood to Coast before and even won similar races for Google; some of us were rookies to all-night relay races. What brought us all together was a love of running and a desire to get Team Google to the finish line as fast as possible — even if that meant that we wouldn't get much sleep. We started last Friday night with fresh legs, fresh clothes, and lots of enthusiasm. Over the next 197 miles we wore out our legs, made our running clothes and vans smell terrible, and generated even more enthusiasm by coming together as a team and cheering each other on. We had a lot to cheer about, because everyone contributed great performances and because we ran faster than we expected. We finished in 19 hours and 45 minutes, which meant that we averaged 10 miles per hour for the race. That was good enough to finish in 9th place overall and in 3rd place in the corporate division—behind a couple of running shoe companies that you might have heard about. We were more than happy with the result. As we gathered on the beach near the finish line, we enjoyed the sun, the sense of accomplishment, and the camaraderie of our teammates. I smiled and thought back to when I woke up at 4:00 AM in that dark field. Considering all that we had accomplished, maybe I wasn't so crazy after all. Here's a picture of the Team Google runners and drivers, enjoying the beach at the finish. Posted by Chris Holstrom, Technical Writer

Whenever we release a product in beta as we just did with Google Chrome, we can always count on our users to come up with ways to improve it. This week's example: several eagle-eyed users and bloggers have expressed concern that Section 11 of Google Chrome's terms of service attempts to give us rights to any user-generated content "submitted, posted or displayed on or through" the browser.You'll notice if you look at our other products that many of them are governed by Section 11 of our Universal Terms of Service. This section is included because, under copyright law, Google needs what's called a "license" to display or transmit content. So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog's content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service. In Gmail, for example, the terms specifically disclaim our ownership right to Gmail content.So for Google Chrome, only the first sentence of Section 11 should have applied. We're sorry we overlooked this, but we've fixed it now, and you can read the updated Google Chrome terms of service. If you're into the fine print, here's the revised text of Section 11:11. Content license from you11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.And that's all. Period. End of section.It will take a little time to propagate this change through the 40+ languages in which Google Chrome is available, and to remove the language in the download versions. But rest assured that we're working quickly to fix this. The new terms will of course be retroactive, and will cover everyone who has downloaded Google Chrome since it was launched.Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel

A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world.Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others.For starters, there's a brand-new feature called "name tags" in Picasa Web Albums that helps you quickly label all the people in your photos, so you can organize and share your photos based on who's in the picture. Name tags uses advanced technology to automatically group similar faces together. That way, you can quickly label all the people you care about in your photo collection. Once you've labeled your photos, it's then a snap to do things like create a slideshow with every picture of you and your best friend, or easily share party photos with everybody who appears in that photo album. This demo video shows you what you can do with name tags: There's more to Picasa Web Albums. The site now has a fresh, clean look that makes photos look great, and a new "Explore" page that allows you to browse some of the most interesting public content on our site, including "Recent Photos," a near-real-time view of public photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. You can now also email photos directly to Picasa Web Albums.Of course, Picasa Web Albums is only half the story. The great advantage of Picasa Web Albums has always been its integration with Picasa, Google's free photo management software for your PC. And today we're making public the beta version of Picasa 3 at picasa.google.com.Sharing photos with Picasa has always been remarkably simple, but in Picasa 3, we've made sharing so simple you don't even have to lift a finger. A new 'sync to web' button allows you to sync specified albums on your PC to the web. If you edit or add photos to the album on your PC, those changes will be automatically reflected on Picasa Web Albums. You can even specify who you'd like to share your web albums with from the Picasa software itself.We've packed many other new features into Picasa 3. There's a slew of powerful new editing tools to retouch and restore photos, automatically detect and fix red-eye, or attractively add text to your images. Plus, there's plenty of the fun stuff -- we completely overhauled things like photo collages and slideshows, giving you more creative freedom over composition and layout. Not to mention a brand-new movie maker that can blend photos, video, webcam capture, and music to create customized movies that you can easily share on YouTube.You can learn more about Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums on the Google Photos blog, or by watching the overview video below. Please give both a try -- and give us feedback!Posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager

In yesterday's post on Google Chrome, we promised to let you know when it would be available for everyone to try -- and that time is now. Visit http://www.google.com/chrome to download and start exploring. (For the moment, it's available only for Windows users, but you can sign up on the download page to learn when the Mac and Linux versions are available.)Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

The general election season officially kicked off last week as delegates gathered in Denver for the Democratic National Convention - and Google and YouTube were there to enable and promote the use of the Internet to bring voters and candidates closer than ever before. People across the U.S. were able to keep up with the latest convention news and action using YouTube, Picasa and Election News - centralized and featured on our Conventions site.On the ground, delegates and attendees got a taste of Google at our Google Retreat in the Big Tent, where they could drink refreshing smoothies, enjoy free massages and sample our newest election products, including the 2008 U.S. Elections site, the Google Maps Election Gallery and Power Readers in Politics.Many of our Democratic guests took the time to post video nominations of Senator Barack Obama at YouTube booths in the Google Retreat and inside the Pepsi Center. Our goal was to allow those in attendance to express their enthusiasm for the Party on video - and allow voters at home a more robust and diverse view of the proceedings in Denver than ever before. We collected over 500 such videos from delegates on hand. In addition, party and political leaders – among them Governor Mark Warner, Senator Harry Reid, Governor Bill Richardson, Governor Brian Schweitzer, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin – and celebrities like John Legend, Charles Barkley, and Louis Gossett Jr. took the opportunity to speak directly to the YouTube community and/or to talk about why they are nominating Obama (as did Congressman Dennis Kucinich, pictured here). Their videos, and a whole lot more, including Senator Obama's acceptance speech, are available on our 2008 Conventions YouTube channel.Along the 16th Street Mall, visitors stepped into our Google Maps voting booths to find how to register and where to cast their ballots with our US Voter Info Guide.Our CEO, Eric Schmidt, participated in a townhall discussion moderated by Rachel Maddow on technology's role in modern politics, from the Macaca incident to the next administration.Video Embed:We even showcased Google Maps on a Jumbotron before Barack Obama's stadium speech in an effort to illustrate Americans' top concerns for 2008; Google App Engine helped us host the mashup and manage thousands of incoming text messages. See the live map on the DNC website.And to celebrate the closing night of the convention, we partnered with Vanity Fair to throw a party for press, celebrities, political leaders and executives in attendance. Our guests challenged each other to tennis matches in the "hallway of Wiis" and performed their favorite hits in the Rock Band room.This week we're in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention, which of course has taken a muted tone in the face of Hurricane Gustav. Thankfully, so far the damage has been less than predicted and the convention proceedings may be able to resume. In the meantime, delegates are using YouTube to upload messages of support via video, Google Earth to track Gustav's progress, and Google Maps to display evacuation sites and hurricane forecasts. And this week we're excited to be able to stream the convention live each night on Google News, thanks to Ustream, the official streaming provider of the RNC. When we're not showing live coverage, we'll have highlights from the previous day's activities.Live Streaming by UstreamUpdate: Added reference to Google App Engine mashups.Posted by Rick Klau, Brittany Bohnet, and Steve Grove, Google Elections Team

It was a mere three years ago that YouTube streamed its first video, forever changing the way we share experiences with people regardless of time and distance. At home, equipped with ubiquitous technology like a digital camcorder, a computer webcam or even a mobile phone, we can easily create video clips and share them with our friends and family. Technology is no longer a barrier on either end. All you need is a browser and a fast Internet connection.The same has not been true for this rich form of information-sharing in the office. Companies readily recognize the power of video as a medium for communication and collaboration, for reaching out to employees in remote offices and for knowledge transfer. Unfortunately, there hasn't been an easy way to distribute video content to an increasingly distributed workforce. Custom video sharing solutions have been prohibitively resource-intensive for businesses, and public video sharing sites don't give businesses the right level of security and privacy for internal-only content. Enter Google Video for businesses, available today as part of Google Apps Premier Edition. Imagine YouTube's ease of sharing and watching videos, but in a secure, private environment made for content like internal corporate announcements, team member status updates, employee training materials and informal information-sharing. Videos can be easily shared with everyone in the company or with specific individuals. People can comment on, rate and tag videos that they watch, bringing even more useful information to subsequent viewers. When we started using Google Video for business inside Google, we were surprised at how quickly Googlers in 20+ countries took to the app. Many of our most popular internal videos were created of their own accord by individuals and teams for sharing with colleagues, a testament to how video has taken horizontal collaboration to the next level.Watch this to learn how we've been using video inside Google:You can learn more about video sharing and other innovative collaboration apps for businesses at www.google.com/apps/collaboration. And stay tuned for info about Google Video for schools and universities. It'll be available as part of Google Apps Education Edition on September 8.Posted by Pavni Diwanji, Engineering Director

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We'll post an update here as soon as it's ready.Update @ 3:30 PM: We've added a link to our comic book explaining Google Chrome.Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

As Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, we've assembled some resources to keep people informed and, we hope, out of harm's way. These include:

• Google meta-page to help recovery efforts and tracking: google.com/gustav_sept08.html
• Latest Gustav reports on Google NewsSpecial content in the Google Earth Weather folder (track Gustav's progress and forecast, see the latest advisories from the National Hurricane Center, view Louisiana Live webcams)
• More info on our LatLong blog (we'll continue to post additional info here)

Our thoughts are again with Gulf-region families as they struggle against the forces of nature.Posted by Kate Hurowitz, Google Blog team

Less than a year ago, we announced the Android Developer Challenge, a two-part contest for developers to design engaging, innovative mobile applications for Android to the tune of $10 million total in awards. Since the kickoff of the first part of the contest (ADC I) last November, we've been eagerly waiting to see what these brilliant minds would come up with. The first round of ADC I closed earlier this year, awarding the top 50 entrants with $25,000 each. Today marks the closing of the second and final round of ADC I, in which 10 winners will receive $275,000 and 10 semi-finalists will be awarded $100,000. We'd like to wish a hearty congrats to all the award recipients!Visit the Android Developers blog to read more about the finalists' projects, and check back for updates on ADC II.Posted by Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

In countries like India, great maps and comprehensive local data are hard to come by. And traditional mapping approaches are stretched to the limit in such environments, where infrastructure and local businesses are evolving at a furious pace.This need inspired us in Google India to design and build Google Map Maker, which enables users everywhere over to create rich, deep maps and fresh local data. People can mark their favorite spots in their cities and hometowns, add features such as roads, parks, and buildings, tag small businesses to help users find them, and collaborate to map neighborhoods of interest. This product is motivated by the spirit of information democracy, where people can create information that are moderated and consumed by their peers.Today, we are bringing home this innovation by launching Google Map Maker in India, which has already been deployed in 57 other countries.We hope Google Map Maker will result in rich local data which will benefit Google users both on the web and on mobile. The creation of base maps where there were previously none will encourage many mashups, mapplets and other cool applications that make use of this data. We're also excited to see Google Map Maker create a new breed of local map experts who bring their passion for their neighborhoods and communities into the online world, adding to local commerce, tourism and investment.I will leave you with a map of IIT Bombay, the alma mater to many of us in Google India. When I spent a few hours mapping IIT Bombay -- the place I lived in, the school I went to, and the streets I played on, it turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying experience that reconnected me to a place that is home to many of my memories. We hope you will find the Google Map Maker experience as fun and fulfilling as we do.Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Software Engineer and creator, Google Map Maker

Back in May, we introduced a site called Google for Non-Profits, to showcase the tools organizations can use to raise funds and collaborate easily and efficiently. These tools, we hoped, would enable non-profits to focus less on creaky email systems or lost documents -- and more on their missions.For at least one non-profit, this was old news. Months before we unveiled our non-profit site, Marianne Clauw, who chairs CASA Washtenaw, an organization pairing volunteers with children in the local court system -- learned about Google products through an employee in our Ann Arbor office. With a website that she now compares to a "dusty storefront" and data sitting in a "scarily unsecure, un-backed up" state, she remembers, "I could see right away that we needed to switch to Google services."Clauw and her colleague Ferlie Yruma used Google Page Creator (now Google Sites) to develop a shiny new website, complete with a YouTube video, a Google Calendar that reflects real-time updates, and a Checkout button allowing users to donate with a few clicks of a mouse. They applied and earned a Google Grant to run free AdWords advertising. As volunteer applications and donations trickled in, they began using Gmail and Docs to streamline the way they worked internally.Here's what they have to say about the experience:"Non-profits are not competitive by nature,” observes Clauw. “But we live in a competitive landscape: for donors, for volunteers, for grants. What we've done with Google is a major step in being competitive.”When CASA Washtenaw competes at a high level, Washtenaw County kids win. And for this non-profit, that's the biggest prize of all.Posted by Eileen Duffy, AdWords Associate

At a time when more and more digital technologies are becoming indispensable to millions of people, the field of computer science (CS) is in trouble. Enrollment and retention of CS students, particularly those historically underrepresented in the field (women, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Hispanics) has declined sharply. According to the Computing Research Association, CS enrollment in the U.S. was at its peak in 2000, with 15,958 undergrads. By 2006, enrollment declined by roughly half: 7,798 undergrads. And enrollment among already-underrepresented groups has dropped even more sharply.We hope to address this problem (and potential shortage) with a variety of programs beyond our scholarship initiatives. Recently, our educational outreach group, University Programs, and Diversity and Talent Inclusion teams joined forces to create the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI). This special institute included an interactive and collaborative CS curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. We chose 17 college sophomores, all aspiring computer scientists, to attend the all-expenses-paid CSSI in Mountain View from August 3–15.Our goals for the institute:

• To enrich the skills of students early in their CS studies (or at risk of leaving the major) in an effort to increase the pipeline into the CS major and boost retention
• To provide a social and professional network for underrepresented (women, Hispanic, African-American, and/or Native-American) technology students
• To empower students, giving them the tools, motivation and confidence to continue with CS studies
• To show students daily life at Google and the amazing applications of CS that occur here

The CSSI faculty was comprised of Google engineers and our educational outreach group. We paired students with Google "buddies" - engineers with whom they can develop a long-term advising relationship. Students heard from professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a CS degree.Students worked in teams to build a completely interactive Web 2.0 website, keeping in mind both practical programming skills and the theory behind it.We plan to keep in touch with these students across their college careers, and to encourage future participants to complete their CS work and join the community of computer scientists.Posted by Rebecca Selvenis, University Programs Specialist

Late last year, we introduced our newest tool for YouTube's content identification and management system, Video ID. While we have long provided copyright owners with similar content policies and tools, Video ID was revolutionary because it provided real choice and control to content owners by combining a sophisticated policy engine with cutting-edge video matching technology. With the other tools in our content ID system, Video ID helps content owners decide exactly what they want done with their videos, whether to block, promote, or even—if a copyright holder chooses to license their content to appear on the site—monetize them.We've been curious to see what copyright holders would choose. Would the vast majority of partners block user-uploaded videos? Or would they embrace Video ID as an opportunity to generate revenue and exposure for their content online?As it turns out, our partners are choosing the latter, monetizing 90% of all claims created through Video ID. This has led directly to a similarly significant increase in monetizable partner inventory, as our Video ID partners are seeing claimed content more than double their number of views, against which we can run ads. This means that if a partner has, say, 10,000 views of its content, leaving up videos claimed by our system will lead to an average additional 10,000 views of that same content. We call this "partner uplift," and for some partners we've seen uplift as high as 9000%.Access to our copyright management tools is open to all rights owners, regardless of whether they choose to license their content to YouTube. But it's clear to our 300+ Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans. These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online, and with the help of our users, they are finding Video ID critical to discovering such opportunities.You can learn more about our content identification and management system on its new home page.Posted by David King, YouTube Product Manager

In my previous post, I described the components of your web search experience and the principles behind creating a great search experience. There are complex algorithms underlying simple features such as spelling correction and the two line snippets that describe each search result. We figure out what works by running experiments - tiny tests for a small number of users which help us determine whether that feature helps or hurts. Experimentation is a very powerful tool, and we use it very widely to test potential changes to search. At any given time, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world. I'll start by describing experimental changes so small that you can barely tell the difference after staring at the page, and end with a couple of much more visually obvious experiments that we have run. There are a lot of people dedicated to detecting everything Google changes - and occasionally, things imagined that we did not do! - and they do latch on to a lot of our more prominent experiments. But the experiments with smaller changes are almost never noticed. For example, can you tell the difference between the two pages below? Choice 1: Choice 2: I'm pretty sure I would not be able to tell the difference if I were to see each of them on their own. But apparently you can! At least in the aggregate, there is a measurable difference with a change like this. In case you can't tell after staring, the white space around the first search result has changed, which makes the first result in Picture 2 slightly more visually prominent. This visual prominence conveys the fact that according to our ranking signals, the first result is a substantially better match than the next result. On the plus side, it helps you focus on the first result. But if you were looking for one of the other results, it can disrupt your scanning of the page. An experiment helps us determine which effect is more prominent, and whether a change would help you search faster. Another change, almost as minimal visually, is between these two results: In this case, the difference in user interaction is so clear and marked we could tell extremely quickly which one worked better: the difference is in the thickness of the plus box next to the stock quote. Now, coming to the conclusion that one is "better" is tricky, and there's many a possible slip on the way there. Does more interaction with the plus box mean that it is better? How about if users then miss good results because they are distracted by the more prominent plus box? Keep watching Google to see which version won! If we've done our job right, almost without your noticing, things will work just that little bit better for you. The world will seem rosier. Birds will sing. Or maybe not - but at least you will have the best-designed plus box we can come up with :) Okay, so not all of our experiments are insane eye tests. My main point in highlighting the above experiments is that we test almost everything, even things that you would think are so small that we could not possibly care (nor could they possibly matter). In fact, small changes do matter, and we do care. Another class of experiments have to do with changes that are not purely visual, but rather involve changes to the underlying presentation algorithms. For instance, the algorithm that is responsible for the titles and snippets of result pages now highlights stems and some synonyms of the original query term. For the query [hp printer drivers] we will also return results that include and highlight the word "driver".This sort of "stemming," as it's called, is generally a good idea, because it helps you better identify results that match your query, but not always. Experiments of this sort help us verify (or, occasionally, overturn) our assumptions regarding changes in these algorithms. There is a further class of experiments - the kind that are hard to miss - which introduces fairly prominent features. Even with these larger features, the goal of experimentation always remains the same: are we adding something that really helps people, or is this just another distraction? Google does not really come with a user manual (actually, there are some nicely-written help pages, but we're pretty sure most of you don't bother to read them!). So features need to stand on their own feet, without the help of a careful explanation. Part of the goal of an experiment is to understand just how a feature will be used, which might be quite different from what we initially intended. Here's an example of an experiment that lets you comment on search results and move them around on the result page: At this point, I can't say what we expect from this feature; we're just curious to see how it will be used. These are a small sample of the kinds of experiments we run as we test everything from the barely visible to the glaringly obvious. So the next time you use Google and it seems a little different - well, maybe it is. Just for you! Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

Have you ever been stumped in finding the right words to search for? Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldn't remember any of the artist names or song titles. So I started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that I did remember -- and like magic, I saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that I wanted! (I was opted-in to the keyword suggestions Google Labs experiment at the time). At that moment, I was so proud to be working on Google Suggest, a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.Today we're excited because Google Suggest will be "graduating" from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we'll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box.We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently. Below are some great ways Google Suggest can help simplify your searching.

• Help formulate queries: Instead of just typing [hotels in washington] - did you want [hotels in washington dc] or [hotels in washington state]? Don't remember that song title or person's name? Let Google help you search (and yes, I ended up choosing "From This Moment" as our wedding song).

• Reduce spelling errors: Since suggestions are spell-corrected using the same "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, misspellings and typos can be corrected ahead of time. Instead of wasting your time with a misspelled query like [new yrok times] or [tomorow never dies], search the first time with the correctly-spelled query.

• Saves keystrokes: Who wants to spend their time typing [san francisco chronicle] when you can just type in "san f..." and choose the suggestion right away?

The Google Suggest feature originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com. Special thanks to my teammates Miki Herscovici (Tech Lead) and the rest of the engineering team in Haifa for their hard work in making this happen.So what are you waiting for? Give it a try. Start typing in a query on Google.com to see Google Suggest in action!Update: Corrected team mention.Posted by Jennifer Liu, Product Manager

As many of you know, the 2008 U.S. political conventions--two weeks of party business that begins for the Democrats in Denver today, and for the Republicans in Minneapolis next week--marks the beginning of the general election season. To help you stay informed and engaged in the upcoming election, we're launching a one-stop shop for political information: www.google.com/2008election.Can't make it to Denver or Minneapolis? Go to our conventions site to view the latest news, videos, photos and blog posts. See what the candidates are saying about the issues that concern you by using Elections Video Search, which lets you search across all of the candidate speeches and videos by word. If you want to see what the Obama or McCain campaigns and other political journalists are reading, check out Power Readers in Politics and subscribe to get daily snippets. You can also interact with a wide variety of political mash-ups in the Google Maps Elections Gallery. If you're a teacher, inform your students about the political process with our Election Toolkit for Teachers. If you happen to be running for office yourself, or are blogging about various campaigns, go to our Campaign Toolkit to find out how you can use online tools to raise money, follow the campaign trail or spread your influence.And as election day grows closer, we're working on ways for you to find local voter registration sites or polling places on demand -- stay tuned for more details on that.We're excited to be a part of this exciting election season, where technology is playing a groundbreaking role in connecting candidates and voters.Posted by Rick Klau and Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team

It's back-to-school season in the U.S. and social studies teachers everywhere are excited about the November elections and all of the ways that politics has evolved since even just four years ago. Technology is advancing. Internet fundraising has brought all kinds of new small donors into the political process, social networking is helping campaigns and citizens organize themselves in new ways, and YouTube, which didn't even exist four years ago, has swept the political dialogue.With technology producing such dramatic changes in American politics, we want to make sure it's easy for teachers to bring some of the best Internet tools into the classroom to help students get engaged. Working with the National Student/Parent Mock Election, we've pulled together a site called Elections Tools for Teachers where you can find descriptions and suggested learning activities for tools like YouTube, Google Maps, Elections Video Search and Power Readers, which we announced here yesterday.We want students to walk away from their engagement in this election with a sense of excitement about our democratic process and with the belief that their voices matter. As Gloria Kirshner, president of the Mock Election has said, "In the classrooms of today are the Presidents, Senators, Congress members and, most important, the voters of tomorrow. Whether we are sending these children to the White House or to the polls, we hope to send them with a deep understanding of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'"Please let us know if you find Elections Tools for Teachers helpful in your teaching, and we hope you'll enroll your students in this year's National Mock Election on October 30th.Posted by Galen Panger & Cristin Frodella, Google Educators Team

The global nature of our mission is reflected in the phrases the "world's information" and "universally accessible." To this end, you may have recently read about our 40-language initiative and the story of a community coming together to develop Google search in the Maori language.Following on this theme, we'd like to highlight a few new products that enable a better online experience for Tamil speakers around the world.First, we just released Google News in Tamil. Like other Google News editions, we gather stories from the various Tamil news sources on the web and present an automatically- generated summary with links to the most important stories in each section.We recognize that it can sometimes be hard to enter Tamil text with existing keyboards. Our transliteration technology enables the conversion from English text to phonetically equivalent text in Indian languages. For example, using transliteration, you could type "vanakkam" and we would convert it to Tamil script as வணக்கம். We have embedded this technology in several Google products to make it easier to enter text in Tamil.Google search in Tamil enables users to start typing in English and automatically get query suggestions in Tamil. If you wanted to enter the query "ponniyin selvan" in Tamil, just start typing it in English - e.g. "ponni" and we will show the Tamil suggestions:Tamil transliteration in Blogger is designed for bloggers publishing content in Tamil when using the English keyboard for text entry. It's our hope that this will make Tamil content more popular and more easily available online.Tamil transliteration in orkut makes it easier to communicate with friends and family by exchanging scraps in Tamil.We hope that each of these products will help to bring the benefits of the Internet to the millions of Tamil speakers in India and elsewhere.Posted by Vinodh Kumar R and Naren Manappa, Software Engineers

We're reading a lot about the candidates and the media this election season. But what are they reading? At google.com/powerreaders now you can track the news sites and blogs Barack Obama and John McCain read (from Drudge to The Daily Show) and follow articles catching the eyes of leading political journalists. Both the McCain and Obama presidential campaigns and leading political journalists are using Google Reader to keep up with their favorite new sites and blogs as well as share articles that interest them. You can follow shared articles and blog posts, or you can add participants' reading lists or shared news feeds to your own Reader account.We're pleased to include the following contributors in our launch:

• Obama and McCain campaigns
• Mike Allen, POLITICO
• Chuck DeFeo, Townhall
• John Dickerson, Slate
• Mark Halperin, TIME
• Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
• Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
• Jon Meacham, Newsweek
• Patrick Ruffini, The Next Right

Visit google.com/powerreaders to stay up to date on what the political gurus are reading -- so you too can become one by November.Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager