Way back in 1946, the Philadelphia Warriors beat the Chicago Stags in the first professional basketball league championship. Plenty has changed since then, including the name of the league (BBA to NBA), the team names (who are the Stags?!) and the length of the uniform shorts. But there are still some certainties in hoops—the rim remains 10 feet high, there are still five guys per team on the court—and at its core, basketball remains the same.

In fact, sometimes it even repeats itself. This year’s finals series between the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat is a re-match from five years ago. When we take a look at the data in our Insights for Search tool, it seems that sports fans across the U.S. are much more interested in the match-up this time around, as searches for both teams are currently far outpacing their 2006 levels.

Basketball has always been a game of big stars—with just 10 players on the court at any one time, one player can change the game in a major way. Looking at players like [kobe bryant] and [tim duncan], we can see the professional league’s best players have shined during the NBA Finals. This year is proving to be no exception as the big names in the playoffs dominate people’s basketball searches. Mavs forward Dirk Nowitzki is the most popular Maverick and Lebron bests his fellow super-stars, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade, as well as the rest of the Heat players.

While Lebron “King” James and Dirk “The Diggler” Nowitzki are the top dogs on their respective teams, it’s another player, Jason Kidd of the Mavericks, who is really the breakout star of these Finals. The 17-year NBA veteran has visited the Finals before (with the New Jersey Nets in 2002 and 2003), but he’s never won a championship; in fact, Kidd has played in more playoff games without winning a championship than any other active player. With his team currently up 3-2, this year might finally be his to win. While he’s had a career worthy of the Hall of Fame, the veteran has seen a resurgence in interest from U.S. sports fans this season, as you can see in the chart below.

Another way to look at NBA Finals search trends is geographically. As you’d expect, foreign-born players are seeing interest spike in their homelands. Dirk Nowitzki is popular in Germany and Joel Anthony, a Canadian playing center for the Miami Heat, is generating lots of interest from Canuck hoops fans.

It’s not just the two cities with teams left playing that are searching for info on the series. Cleveland—the jilted former home of Lebron James—has taken a bigger interest in the [nba finals] than ever before. It seems both lovers and haters are paying attention to their former star’s fate.

To understand the fan frenzy in Dallas, we need look no further than how the team stacks up to the traditional fare for most Texans: barbecue. In the Dallas area, [mavs] searches are currently outpacing [bbq] searches. When basketball is outpacing ribs in Texas, you know something big is going down in the Lone Star State.

Though I’m neither a Texan nor a Floridian, with just two potential games left in a neck-and-neck series I’ll be settling in to watch Game 6 this Sunday hoping for another historic NBA Finals moment.

Posted by Mike Rooney, Account Executive, Online Sales

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve made it easier to see recent interactions you’ve had with people in Gmail, added a set of customization options to Google Calendar and streamlined the discussions feature in Google documents. We also welcomed tens of thousands of new customers, including our largest governmental customer to date.

Gmail’s new people widget
The new people widget in Gmail shows up alongside email conversations and conveniently displays the contact information you have for people included on the message. When you click on someone in the widget, we’ll automatically show you a snapshot of the recent interactions you’ve had together, including email messages, calendar appointments and shared documents.

Calendar appointment slots
You asked and we listened: as of Monday, Google Calendar lets you set up blocks of appointment slots that colleagues, students and customers can reserve online. For example, professors can let students book time during office hours, and accountants can allow clients to make consultation appointments. It’s easy to embed an interactive calendar of your availability on any web page, so others can view and reserve your open appointments.

Default meeting lengths and more print options in Google Calendar
Last week, Google Calendar got two new customization options: adjustable default meeting lengths and new print options. If your typical meeting is longer or shorter than the default 30 minute appointment, you can tailor the default length once and spend less time changing the details of each meeting you create. If you prefer to have a paper printout of your agenda, Calendar now lets you print custom date ranges in addition to the standard day, week and month views.

Improvements to discussions in Google documents
A few months ago we introduced discussions in Google documents, and on Wednesday we improved the way you can converse with collaborators in a document. The discussion pane now shows the snippet of text being discussed, which adds context to each conversation, and you can view document statistics like how many people have recently viewed your document. We also made long discussions more compact by collapsing extended conversations and streamlined the format of email notifications for discussions.

Who’s gone Google?
Businesses and other organizations continue to migrate from legacy communication and collaboration technologies to Google Apps. Summer may be upon us, but Directski.com is preparing to help more people “ski for less” next winter by streamlining their operations with Google Apps. LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels—with 7,000 employees and 20 hotel and resort properties—is moving to Google Apps to help their staff provide a more enjoyable guest experience. Among other uses, LXR’s human resources team is using video chat to conduct interviews instead of flying remote candidates to Florida.

This week we also gathered in Washington, D.C. with more than 100 government IT leaders to explore how state, local and federal agencies can increase productivity and conserve taxpayer dollars with our cloud-based solutions. As part of the agenda, we took some time to celebrate dozens of agencies that have selected Google Apps in the last few months, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With more than 25,000 employees, contractors and associates who will use Google Apps for email, document collaboration, video chat and more, it’s the largest government agency to move to Google Apps yet.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Green Blog)

Over the last few years, several innovative electric vehicle (EV) technologies have emerged in the marketplace and we’ve been working to update our green transportation infrastructure. As a result, we’ve now developed the largest corporate EV charging infrastructure in the country. We’re also including the next generation of plug-in vehicles in Gfleet, our car-sharing program for Googlers.

When Google.org launched the RechargeIt initiative in 2007, there were no commercially available plug-in hybrid EVs on the market. So we bought several Toyota Priuses and had them retrofitted with A123 Hymotion batteries to create our own mini-fleet of plug-in hybrids to demonstrate the technology. It was the birth of Gfleet, which has since become a valued perk and makes it easier for Googlers to use our biodiesel shuttle system to commute to work by providing green transportation options for people after they arrive at the Googleplex. The new Gfleet will include more than 30 plug-ins, starting with Chevrolet Volts and Nissan LEAFs, several of which have already arrived and are available for Googlers to use today. We’ll be adding models from other manufacturers as they become available.

To juice up our new cars and provide more charging options for Googlers, we’ve been working with Coulomb Technologies’ ChargePoint® Network to continue to expand our EV charging infrastructure. We’ve added 71 new and faster Level 2 chargers to the 150 Level 1 chargers we’ve installed over the last few years, bringing our total capacity to more than 200 chargers, with another 250 new ones on the way. The ChargePoint Network provides us the charging data necessary to track and report on the success of our green transportation initiative.

Overall, our goal is to electrify five percent of our parking spaces—all over campus and free of charge (pun intended) to Googlers. Our expanded charging system has already helped several Googlers decide to buy new EVs of their own, and we hope others will, too.



All told, Gfleet and our biodiesel shuttle system result in net annual savings of more than 5,400 tonnes of CO2. That’s like taking over 2,000 cars off the road, or avoiding 14 million vehicle miles every year! But we’re only one company, so we hope other companies think about how they can incorporate these new technologies into their own infrastructure. By supporting new, green transportation technologies, we’re enabling our employees to be green and doing our part to help spur growth in the industry.

Posted by Rolf Schreiber, Technical Program Manager, Electric Transportation

It’s been an exciting year in the display advertising business—the movement of media online and the emergence of new technologies are causing incredible growth, and we’re investing significantly to help improve display advertising for publishers, advertisers and users. But I believe we’re poised to make even greater advances in the years ahead. We’re at the beginning of a user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before.

This was the subject of a keynote I gave this morning at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Innovation Days @ Internet Week entitled “There’s a perfect ad for everyone.” You can view the recording at google.com/watchthisspace. In the speech, I made six predictions about how display advertising will change for the better by 2015:

1. The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Today, people are bombarded by online ads, but they don’t connect with most of these ads in a meaningful way. I believe the trend will be for people to ultimately see fewer, but better ads.
2. Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent. As ads become less cluttered, more relevant, more engaging and more attractive, we’ll see the rate at which people interact with display ads (such as watching videos or playing games) increase dramatically.
3. People will have a direct say in 25 percent of the ads they see. Whether by choosing to watch—or not watch—video ads, updating their ads preferences to customize the ads they see or actively subscribing to or choosing to receive particular ads, users will be more in control of when and how they see ads online.
4. 35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions. Technology is helping marketers measure their ads with new tools that look at factors like emotional engagement and impact on offline behavior (like in-store shopping choices). We see a longer-term future where these become the primary metrics used to measure the success of a campaign, meaning marketers will be able to deliver the ads that potential customers say they like the most.
5. 25 billion ads per day will tell people why they are seeing them. We believe it’s important to give people as much information as possible about why they see particular ads. That’s why we’ve always included an “Ads by Google” notice, and now the AdChoices logo, on ads across the Google Display Network. We strongly support the widespread use of this logo by members of the display industry and by 2015, believe that this sort of notice will become ubiquitous.
6. Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format. We recently conducted a survey with YouGov of more than 1,000 U.S. Internet users, asking them what ad formats they liked. The number of people who said they preferred display ads trailed slightly behind the number who liked glossy magazine ads, cinema ads and even sky-writing—formats that have been around for more than 50 years! We think this will change. Display ads provide an incredible platform to engage, excite and inspire. If we as marketers, publishers and technology providers can deliver experiences that delight the user, we can take this industry to new heights.

I believe that display advertising will eventually grow to become a $200 billion industry. If we make users our focus as I described this morning, it will put us well on track to reach that goal. I can’t wait to see a future in which the full potential of display ads is realized, providing a universally positive experience for people online and helping grow the businesses of publishers and marketers.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising

The electric guitar brings back memories for me of exchanging riffs with friends and wearing out cassette tapes as I meticulously learned songs. Today, we’re attempting to recreate that experience with a doodle celebrating the birthday of musician and inventor Les Paul.

For the next 24 hours on the Google homepage, you’ll find an interactive, playable logo inspired by the guitar developed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee that made the sound of rock and roll possible.

As well as his guitar work, Les Paul experimented in his garage with innovative recording techniques like multitracking and tape delay. In keeping with this spirit of tinkering, those of you in the U.S. can click the black “compose” button to record your own 30-second track. Just strum the strings or trigger notes with the letters or numbers on your keyboards. Clicking the button again will display a link to share the songs you’ve made. (For example, here’s a little tune I put together.)

If you’re curious, the doodle was made with a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas (used in modern browsers to draw the guitar strings), CSS, Flash (for sound) and tools like the Google Font API, goo.gl and App Engine.

I hope you have as much fun playing with and sharing the doodle as we did making it (special thanks to engineers Kristopher Hom and Joey Hurst and doodle team lead Ryan Germick for their work). Crank up your computer volume and make some music!

Update Jun 17: Wow—in just 48 hours in the U.S., you recorded 5.1 years worth of music—40 million songs—using our doodle guitar. And those songs were played back 870,000 times! We’re glad you enjoyed jamming out last week, and you can keep playing: the Les Paul doodle now has a permanent home.

Update June 9, 8:29pm: Due to popular demand, we're leaving the Les Paul doodle up in the U.S. through Friday for an encore. Thanks for jamming with us! ♫

Posted by Alexander Chen, Designer (and musician), Creative Lab

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog and Mobile Blog)

Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.

Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates. We partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.



When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you’ll now see “live departure times” (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.

Live transit departure times after tapping on a station

Live service alerts when receiving transit directions

Live departures and alerts on desktop

We’re working with our public transit partners to help them provide live data to more people in more cities. You can get live transit updates in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile (requires Android 1.6+), as well as Google Maps on all supported desktop and mobile browsers.

Posted by Sasha Gontmakher, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the European Public Policy Blog and Public Policy Blog)

Update June 14, 7:40pm: After we published this post, the Kazakhstan authorities issued new guidance stating that the order no longer applies to previously registered domains. In practice this means we can re-launch google.kz. While we’re pleased that we can once again offer our users in Kazakhstan customized search results, we encourage the Government of Kazakhstan to rescind this requirement for all future .kz domains as well.

The genius of the Internet has always been its open infrastructure, which allows anyone with a connection to communicate with anyone else on the network. It’s not limited by national boundaries, and it facilitates free expression, commerce and innovation in ways that we could never have imagined even 20 or 30 years ago.

Some governments, however, are attempting to create borders on the web without full consideration of the consequences their actions may have on their own citizens and the economy. Last month, the Kazakhstan Network Information Centre notified us of an order issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information in Kazakhstan that requires all .kz domain names, such as google.kz, to operate on physical servers within the borders of that country. This requirement means that Google would have to route all searches on google.kz to servers located inside Kazakhstan. (Currently, when users search on any of our domains, our systems automatically handle those requests the fastest way possible, regardless of national boundaries.)

We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression. If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet. So we have decided to redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh. Unfortunately, this means that Kazakhstani users will experience a reduction in search quality as results will no longer be customized for Kazakhstan.

Measures that force Internet companies to choose between taking actions that harm the open web, or reducing the quality of their services, hurt users. We encourage governments and other stakeholders to work together to preserve an open Internet, which empowers local users, boosts local economies and encourages innovation around the globe.

Posted by Bill Coughran, SVP, Research & Systems Infrastructure