Last week, we opened sign-ups for Google Wave to everyone as part of Google Labs and made it available for all Google Apps domains. Here is the quick (seven minute) update on the state of the product from this year's Google IO conference: Today, it's been a full year since the Wave team first got on stage at the Moscone Center and demoed a new vision for communication and collaboration to a crowd of developers. In a guest article on the Huffington Post last week, Lars described innovation and working on Google Wave as a rollercoaster—and this year has certainly been a fascinating ride. For the past year, I've had the pleasure and the challenge of explaining why this new technology is useful. Unlike some other products that I have also been lucky enough to work on, Wave is not a more advanced approach to a known application like webmail or the browser. It's actually a new category, which can be kind of hard to wrap your head around. I work in Wave every day, and we have identified a number of clear use cases for getting things done in groups at businesses and at schools I wave with my family—with my mom, who is across the country, and with my sister who is a graduate student. We're all on different schedules and very rarely all online at the same time. In one wave, we decided what to wear for a friend's wedding—adding suggestions for each other with links and pictures, updating the wave as we had side conversations and made decisions. My mom and I chatted about my dress choice when we were both online, and then my sister was easily able to catch up later, adding her ideas. It kept all three of us up to speed in one place, rather than having several phone conversations, emails and chats. Sharing these small personal projects in a wave removes the little bits of friction to make the discussions more dynamic and productive.  From talking to other people who use Google Wave, I know I'm not alone. I've been struck by the really personal nature of communicating and working together in Wave, and the emotional response people have to their first uniquely wavey experience, what we call the "Wave a-ha moment." For many people it's the live typing that does it; for others it's the first time they create an in-line reply, embed a YouTube video or edit someone else's text. You really do have to try it to believe it, though—so if you checked out Google Wave six months ago and found yourself at a bit of a loss, take another look. The product is much faster and more stable and we have templates and tutorials to help you get started. Next time you find yourself taking notes while you are on the phone, do it in a wave and add your colleagues, or pull a couple friends or family members onto a wave for a small project... like going to the movies. So head to wave.google.com and sign in. You can get more updates on our blog and even share your stories (ordinary or otherwise) with wave.stories@googlewave.com. Wave on!      |
Posted: 27 May 2010 01:04 PM PDT Last Friday, we said that mobile advertising was moving fast. So are we! Today, we closed our acquisition of AdMob. Omar Hamoui has built a great team and great products at AdMob and we're thrilled to officially welcome them to Google. We'll now begin the process of bringing our products and teams together in the best way, and building new products and features together. We're working to make this integration happen as fast and as seamlessly as possible. We'll actively keep our clients up-to-date as we bring our businesses together — stay tuned! It's clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients' and partners' strategies and with this acquisition, it's now a central part of our own business. In continuing to invest in this highly competitive area, we'll be bringing together our technology, resources and expertise in search advertising with AdMob's innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications. Mobile search is central One of the key ways that people find and access information on their mobile devices, just like on the desktop, is through search. As smart phones have proliferated, we've seen dramatic increases in mobile search volume. Over the past two years, Google's mobile search volumes have grown more than fivefold, at an accelerated pace. In the first three months of 2010, people with smartphones with "full" WebKit browsers (such as the iPhones, Android devices and Palm Pre) searched 62 percent more than they did in the previous three months. Increasingly, people aren't just typing search queries into their mobile devices. They speak them, they take photos of them and they even translate them from different languages. In addition to traditional search ads on mobile devices, we've worked to develop entirely new search ad formats. "Click-to-call" search ads, for example, have been really popular. They enable advertisers to include a local business or national phone number directly in their ad text that you can click to reach the business directly via phone. This is a really great way for you to easily get information from a relevant business (say, a local restaurant), and a highly effective way for advertisers to connect with interested customers. With many more advances to come, search advertising will remain the central way that many businesses connect with consumers on mobile devices. Mobile websites and apps In addition to search, another key way that people access information is through mobile websites (accessed through a browser) and mobile apps (available through Apple's App Store, the Android Marketplace and more). Mobile display and text ads make it easy for publishers and developers to make money from their mobile websites and apps, and enable advertisers to extend the reach of their campaigns to relevant mobile content. In this area, AdMob has been a real pioneer and has innovated at a tremendous pace, building a successful business and working with thousands of advertisers, publishers and developers. AdMob was one of the first companies to serve ads inside mobile applications on the Android and iPhone platforms. They've developed a host of engaging and creative ad units for Android and iPhone apps—for example, interactive video ad units and expandable rich media ads. Google has also been developing new features for in-app ads. For example, last week, we announced that we'll be making "click-to-call" ad formats available to developers who run AdSense in their mobile apps. With Google and AdMob starting to work together, there's lots more innovation to come in this area. The future It's clear that mobile advertising is growing incredibly fast with lots of businesses innovating at great speed. Every day, more marketers are looking to take advantage of the mobile-specific capabilities, extended reach, great returns and value that mobile advertising provides. Advertisers are now starting to see mobile as an essential part of their overall campaigns, not just a silo-ed experiment on the side. We want to unleash agencies' and advertisers' creativity on all mobile devices and deliver them better results from their campaigns, drive better returns and more choice for publishers and developers, and help people get better ads and more free mobile content. We believe that mobile advertising can play a significant role in every single marketing campaign. We're passionate about the unlimited possibilities in this space. Today, with AdMob, our work to make them a reality begins. Stock Repurchase As previously announced, Google intends to repurchase in the open market a number of shares equal to the number of shares issued in the transaction and issuable upon exercise of outstanding options to purchase common stock issued by AdMob. The repurchase program is expected to commence shortly after the completion of the acquisition. The repurchases will be funded from available working capital.     |
Friday, May 28, 2010
Happy 1st birthday, Google Wave!
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