“Europe wake up! We will only return to growth and prosperity if we complete the Single Market.” This motion will be debated tonight at 19:00 CET, live via Google+ Hangout on Air and on YouTube.
European Commissioner Michel Barnier will open the debate. Four EU experts - from the left and the right of the political spectrum and each with an axe to grind - will argue for and against the motion. Via Google+ Hangouts, the experts will cross-examine witnesses - including journalists, academics, economists and entrepreneurs from Ireland, Poland, Germany, France and Greece - to convince you they’re right. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Christine Ockrent will moderate.
The debate takes place just a few days before the EU marks the Single Market’s 20th anniversary. When it was launched in 1992, the Commission’s bold attempt to construct a seamless, truly tariff-free, pan-European market stimulated a wave of ‘Europtimism’. Now, with Europe facing challenging economic times, the Single Market’s importance to Europe is being re-examined.
You can have your say by voting on the motion - both before and after the debate - via youtube.com/versusdebates.
You can also join the discussion by adding your comments and questions to the +Versus Google+ page during the debate. The best questions, as decided by the debate organiser, Intelligence Squared, will be put to the panel, live on air.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Consumers. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Consumers. Tampilkan semua postingan
Rabu, 10 Oktober 2012
Selasa, 24 Januari 2012
Promoting small businesses and economic growth in Europe
As European Finance Ministers gathered in Brussels to address the Euro crisis, we wanted to share our belief that small businesses and entrepreneurs can be at the heart of Europe’s strategy for economic growth. In our view, the key that will unlock this much needed growth is the Internet.
In order to demonstrate this important opportunity, we organised an event today in Brussels bringing together small businesses, European Commission officials, European parliamentarians, business associations and others to discuss how the Internet can drive growth and jobs. Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani keynoted the event, and picked up on the themes of an important manifesto, published last week by the Commission, that is designed to build trust in the Digital Single Market.
The Commissioner said Europe must put the Internet at the heart of its economic strategy. “I think of the third industrial revolution – information technologies are at its heart,” he said. Instead of “destroying” jobs, he insisted that it powers employment, saying that for each position displaced, the Internet creates another 2.6 new positions. Companies with websites grow twice as fast as companies that stay offline, he added. “Our goal is to double the amount of commerce online by 2015,” Tajani said. “We need exponential growth” to get Europe out of its present economic crisis.
Our own European Vice President Matt Brittin announced a new collaboration between the Lisbon Council and Google. In some countries, Matt noted, the Internet already generates more than 7% of GDP - a figure that is set to grow rapidly - with much of the growth coming from small companies. “SMEs are the unsung heroes of the economy,” he said. “But the internet can give them a voice.” In order to prove the point, we assembled small business owners from 15 countries, including a Polish butcher, a Swedish sweet shop, a Dutch clog seller, a Spanish baby clothes retailer, and a Greek travel agent. All power their businesses by leveraging the Internet.
The focus of the event then turned to the platforms (generally large companies) that support online commerce. Martin Tidell, Telenor’s Head of Business Management for SMEs, joined by Google+ hangout from Stockholm and said that the Internet is not just for high tech businesses. “I cannot think of one business that wouldn’t benefit by going online,” he said.
Back in Brussels, Frank Jahn, the Managing Director of Parcels at Belgium’s post office said his company was bracing for a transformation. “We are now a mail company with a parcels operation,” he said. “We need to become a parcels company with a mail operation.”
Next up were three small businesses who shared their experiences of growing online and selling in both domestic markets and across the Single Market. Their panel session also highlighted the "Getting business online” initiative, which has helped more than 250,000 businesses get a website over the last two years.
The final panel of the day, hosted by European Voice, focused on the policy conclusions that the European Commission, European Parliament and the key stakeholder - Europe’s consumers - draw from the debate. And all agreed that the Internet opportunity for businesses is big - and growing.
In order to demonstrate this important opportunity, we organised an event today in Brussels bringing together small businesses, European Commission officials, European parliamentarians, business associations and others to discuss how the Internet can drive growth and jobs. Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani keynoted the event, and picked up on the themes of an important manifesto, published last week by the Commission, that is designed to build trust in the Digital Single Market.
The Commissioner said Europe must put the Internet at the heart of its economic strategy. “I think of the third industrial revolution – information technologies are at its heart,” he said. Instead of “destroying” jobs, he insisted that it powers employment, saying that for each position displaced, the Internet creates another 2.6 new positions. Companies with websites grow twice as fast as companies that stay offline, he added. “Our goal is to double the amount of commerce online by 2015,” Tajani said. “We need exponential growth” to get Europe out of its present economic crisis.
Our own European Vice President Matt Brittin announced a new collaboration between the Lisbon Council and Google. In some countries, Matt noted, the Internet already generates more than 7% of GDP - a figure that is set to grow rapidly - with much of the growth coming from small companies. “SMEs are the unsung heroes of the economy,” he said. “But the internet can give them a voice.” In order to prove the point, we assembled small business owners from 15 countries, including a Polish butcher, a Swedish sweet shop, a Dutch clog seller, a Spanish baby clothes retailer, and a Greek travel agent. All power their businesses by leveraging the Internet.
The focus of the event then turned to the platforms (generally large companies) that support online commerce. Martin Tidell, Telenor’s Head of Business Management for SMEs, joined by Google+ hangout from Stockholm and said that the Internet is not just for high tech businesses. “I cannot think of one business that wouldn’t benefit by going online,” he said.
Back in Brussels, Frank Jahn, the Managing Director of Parcels at Belgium’s post office said his company was bracing for a transformation. “We are now a mail company with a parcels operation,” he said. “We need to become a parcels company with a mail operation.”
Next up were three small businesses who shared their experiences of growing online and selling in both domestic markets and across the Single Market. Their panel session also highlighted the "Getting business online” initiative, which has helped more than 250,000 businesses get a website over the last two years.
The final panel of the day, hosted by European Voice, focused on the policy conclusions that the European Commission, European Parliament and the key stakeholder - Europe’s consumers - draw from the debate. And all agreed that the Internet opportunity for businesses is big - and growing.
Kamis, 13 Oktober 2011
Sizing and seizing the Internet economy
Strange as it might sound, given all the buzz about the digital economy, few concrete numbers exist measuring the Internet’s economic impact. The scarcity of hard data has allowed many to portray the Internet (at worst) as a negative force, destroying jobs, or (at best) as marginal to a country’s economic success.
In the past year Google has worked with a variety of partners to begin filling in this data gap. The Boston Consulting Group researched a series of country-specific reports. The first found that the digital economy accounts for more than seven percent of GDP in the UK. BCG, McKinsey, and Deloitte followed up by analyzing the impact of the Internet on local economies for instance in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Israel, Hong Kong and Australia.
BCG partners David Dean and Paul Zwillenberg recently were in Brussels to present a new study - not commissioned by Google - called Turning Local: From Madrid to Moscow, the Internet is Going Native. It builds on the previous country reports, and adds additional BCG research, to describes the Internet's impact on 50 economies around the globe. BCG drew up an e-Intensity IndexTM which measures countries' Internet infrastructure, the amount of online expenditure and how enthusiastically businesses, consumers and governments engage with new technologies. By 2015, BCG projects, the Internet will contribute 7.3 percent of Danish GDP. Other countries will experience even bigger jumps during the next years. By 2015, the Internet will account for four percent of Spanish GDP, almost double 2009’s figure of 2.2 percent.
If anything, these GDP measures may underestimate the Internet’s true impact—something BCG, McKinsey and Deloitte all acknowledge. For example, in many countries between five and 10 percent of retail sales are researched online before the consumer makes an informed purchase in a physical store, and the cost savings from shopping on the web can be substantial, amounting to almost £1,000 per household in the UK. Similarly, consumers benefit from using free, advertising supported services like email that they would otherwise have to pay to enjoy. McKinsey and IAB Europe found consumers enjoy €100 billion in consumer surplus—almost three times the revenue online advertising companies receive—none of which traditional GDP measures captures.
Earlier this year, McKinsey specifically researched the externalities around Internet search, with collaboration and support from Google. Their independent report, Impact of Internet Technologies: Search, states that search technologies—including but not limited to Google—create over $780 billion of value for the global economy, of which only four percent accrues to the search engines themselves.
Google and other members of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee BIAC last month participated in an expert roundtable at the OECD exploring current and future methods for measuring the impact of the Internet on the global economy. The roundtable will be followed by a report sponsored by Google that will measure the impact of the Internet on OECD member countries.
For BCG, their studies represent only a first step. The goal is to help jumpstart a global conversation on the economic value of the Internet. In Brussels, Dean and Zwillenberg were clear in presentations made to European think tank Bruegel (of which Google is a member) that SME’s are one of the biggest groups of beneficiaries in Europe. Their research, which included a survey of over 9,000 companies, concludes that businesses using the web intensively grow significantly faster than businesses that don't. That’s a theme that we, and BCG, will be revisiting in coming weeks and months.
Posted by Patricia Wruuck, Policy Analyst and Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager
In the past year Google has worked with a variety of partners to begin filling in this data gap. The Boston Consulting Group researched a series of country-specific reports. The first found that the digital economy accounts for more than seven percent of GDP in the UK. BCG, McKinsey, and Deloitte followed up by analyzing the impact of the Internet on local economies for instance in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Israel, Hong Kong and Australia.
BCG partners David Dean and Paul Zwillenberg recently were in Brussels to present a new study - not commissioned by Google - called Turning Local: From Madrid to Moscow, the Internet is Going Native. It builds on the previous country reports, and adds additional BCG research, to describes the Internet's impact on 50 economies around the globe. BCG drew up an e-Intensity IndexTM which measures countries' Internet infrastructure, the amount of online expenditure and how enthusiastically businesses, consumers and governments engage with new technologies. By 2015, BCG projects, the Internet will contribute 7.3 percent of Danish GDP. Other countries will experience even bigger jumps during the next years. By 2015, the Internet will account for four percent of Spanish GDP, almost double 2009’s figure of 2.2 percent.
If anything, these GDP measures may underestimate the Internet’s true impact—something BCG, McKinsey and Deloitte all acknowledge. For example, in many countries between five and 10 percent of retail sales are researched online before the consumer makes an informed purchase in a physical store, and the cost savings from shopping on the web can be substantial, amounting to almost £1,000 per household in the UK. Similarly, consumers benefit from using free, advertising supported services like email that they would otherwise have to pay to enjoy. McKinsey and IAB Europe found consumers enjoy €100 billion in consumer surplus—almost three times the revenue online advertising companies receive—none of which traditional GDP measures captures.
Earlier this year, McKinsey specifically researched the externalities around Internet search, with collaboration and support from Google. Their independent report, Impact of Internet Technologies: Search, states that search technologies—including but not limited to Google—create over $780 billion of value for the global economy, of which only four percent accrues to the search engines themselves.
Google and other members of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee BIAC last month participated in an expert roundtable at the OECD exploring current and future methods for measuring the impact of the Internet on the global economy. The roundtable will be followed by a report sponsored by Google that will measure the impact of the Internet on OECD member countries.
For BCG, their studies represent only a first step. The goal is to help jumpstart a global conversation on the economic value of the Internet. In Brussels, Dean and Zwillenberg were clear in presentations made to European think tank Bruegel (of which Google is a member) that SME’s are one of the biggest groups of beneficiaries in Europe. Their research, which included a survey of over 9,000 companies, concludes that businesses using the web intensively grow significantly faster than businesses that don't. That’s a theme that we, and BCG, will be revisiting in coming weeks and months.
Posted by Patricia Wruuck, Policy Analyst and Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager
Rabu, 16 Februari 2011
A simple way for publishers to manage paid access online
At Humboldt University in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced Google One Pass, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.
Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. And readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.
With One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.
Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like First Click Free, Fast Flip and Living Stories, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.
German publishers Axel Springer AG, Focus Online (Tomorrow Focus) and Stern.de joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include La Presse, Media General, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.
Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. We hope to develop further partnerships with publishers in coming months and look forward to extending One Pass to other countries too. For more information, please take a look at the One Pass website.
Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. And readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.
With One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.
Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like First Click Free, Fast Flip and Living Stories, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.
German publishers Axel Springer AG, Focus Online (Tomorrow Focus) and Stern.de joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include La Presse, Media General, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.
Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. We hope to develop further partnerships with publishers in coming months and look forward to extending One Pass to other countries too. For more information, please take a look at the One Pass website.
Kamis, 17 Juni 2010
The UK’s public data tsunami gathers speed
When the British Government said at the beginning of May that they would be releasing a ‘tsunami of public data’ you had to wonder whether reality would match up to the rhetoric. Oh ye of little faith... A fortnight ago, the Government released hundreds of new datasets - including a full list of Government expenditure - and this week, Transport for London announced that they too would be releasing lots of their transport data for free to the public.
The policy itself is not new. It was kicked off in the UK back in 2009 by Sir Tim Berners Lee and has resulted in the establishment of the data.gov site as the primary place for public data to be accessed. But the new Government has sent some strong signals from the top that it is an even greater priority for them to get government departments and agencies to shift from being information hoarders to information sharers.
This new mood makes it a really exciting time for the data geeks amongst us in the UK. It’s clear that the new British Government is getting as excited about data as the developer community itself, and that it is determined to be a European - and perhaps even global - leader in transparency. Countries around the world are waking up to the huge potential for re-use of data financed by the taxpayer. There are good social and democratic arguments behind this policy - but it also makes economic sense. If Governments want to stimulate the national growth of their local Internet economy, making data public for developers to reuse is a great way to build skills and position the country for data based business models of the future.
But, as we all know, the usability of the data is just as important as the data itself. To the ordinary citizen, a gargantuan list of numbers means nothing. Data only becomes useful when it is rendered accessible to the citizen: the task traditionally of statisticians and, increasingly, creative web developers who ‘mash’ different data sets, drop them into data crunching tools and turn them into citizen friendly applications. From Tube schedules to postcode databases, information works best when it can be overlaid with other datasets and correlations can be made, as services such as those created by the Government’s new Transparency Advisor, Tom Steinberg.
Some departments and agencies have been better than others at releasing data in truly useful ways. A machine readable format rather than in a PDF is preferable - so that developers spend as little time as possible manually reformatting and more time innovating. And there should be as few ‘strings’ attached as possible so developers can easily reuse it, mash it up, and create new tools and services. These details matter - and the next step for the UK officials behind the public data agenda is to ensure that all data released has consistently high standards of usability.
We hope this is the start of something big and that, rather than a one-off tidal wave, this becomes an ever flowing river of information that is released.
Posted by Sarah Hunter, UK Policy Manager.
The policy itself is not new. It was kicked off in the UK back in 2009 by Sir Tim Berners Lee and has resulted in the establishment of the data.gov site as the primary place for public data to be accessed. But the new Government has sent some strong signals from the top that it is an even greater priority for them to get government departments and agencies to shift from being information hoarders to information sharers.
This new mood makes it a really exciting time for the data geeks amongst us in the UK. It’s clear that the new British Government is getting as excited about data as the developer community itself, and that it is determined to be a European - and perhaps even global - leader in transparency. Countries around the world are waking up to the huge potential for re-use of data financed by the taxpayer. There are good social and democratic arguments behind this policy - but it also makes economic sense. If Governments want to stimulate the national growth of their local Internet economy, making data public for developers to reuse is a great way to build skills and position the country for data based business models of the future.
But, as we all know, the usability of the data is just as important as the data itself. To the ordinary citizen, a gargantuan list of numbers means nothing. Data only becomes useful when it is rendered accessible to the citizen: the task traditionally of statisticians and, increasingly, creative web developers who ‘mash’ different data sets, drop them into data crunching tools and turn them into citizen friendly applications. From Tube schedules to postcode databases, information works best when it can be overlaid with other datasets and correlations can be made, as services such as those created by the Government’s new Transparency Advisor, Tom Steinberg.
Some departments and agencies have been better than others at releasing data in truly useful ways. A machine readable format rather than in a PDF is preferable - so that developers spend as little time as possible manually reformatting and more time innovating. And there should be as few ‘strings’ attached as possible so developers can easily reuse it, mash it up, and create new tools and services. These details matter - and the next step for the UK officials behind the public data agenda is to ensure that all data released has consistently high standards of usability.
We hope this is the start of something big and that, rather than a one-off tidal wave, this becomes an ever flowing river of information that is released.
Posted by Sarah Hunter, UK Policy Manager.
Jumat, 09 April 2010
TechTalk: liberating data in the internet cloud
![[GoogleBrusselsTechTalk_300(2).gif]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jRmroAmiAkg/S2hSkkzExJI/AAAAAAAABA8/7ju6pWgkWa4/s1600/GoogleBrusselsTechTalk_300%282%29.gif)
It's fair to say that the most popular applications and services that exist today are all to be found in the internet cloud - rather than actually on your computer, as installed applications. Think social networks, email, photosharing, online documents, blogs - and much more of course.
These services are constantly being improved, and new services appear all the time. Users switch services or try out new ones all the time too, perhaps because their friends are using a different service, because there’s better functionality or faster performance elsewhere, or because they just want better service.
So let’s imagine you’ve been using a particular service for a while, and - for whatever reason - you decide to switch to a different provider. A lot of your data is now stored in the service - your photo collection maybe, your status updates, your contacts, your emails and so on. Which raises the question:
How on earth do I get all of my data out of this service and transfer it the new one?
At Google, that’s a question we take very seriously, so seriously, that we have a special team of engineers who spend their time doing nothing else but making sure that it is easy to stop using Google services, and easy to take your data with you, using open standards and formats.
The name of that team is the Data Liberation Front (and yes, for anyone who had spotted the oblique reference, they are Monty Python fans).
On Tuesday 20th of April, Brian Fitzpatrick, the founder of the Data Liberation Front, will be in Brussels to give a Google TechTalk. He’ll explain what "liberating data" actually means, why he thinks it's so important for internet users, for the future of the Internet, and for Europe.
As usual, the TechTalk will take place over lunchtime (there will be food available of course!), at the Google office.
We hope you can make it along. If you’d like to attend, please register here.
When: Tuesday, April 20, 12:15 - 13:45 hours CET (Sandwich lunch provided).
Where: Google Brussels - Chaussée D'Etterbeek 180 - Steenweg op Etterbeek 180, 2nd floor, 1040 Brussels
Brian Fitzpatrick started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005. An open source contributor for over 10 years, Brian is the engineering manager for several Google products, a member of both the Apache Software Foundation and the Open Web Foundation, a former engineer at Apple and CollabNet, a Subversion developer, a co-author of "Version Control with Subversion", and a resident of Chicago.
Alain Van Gaever
Policy Manager - Google Europe
Kamis, 25 Februari 2010
This stuff is tough
Yesterday's news that the European Commission has opened a preliminary inquiry into competition complaints from three companies has generated a lot of questions about how Google's ranking works. Here, Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow responsible for ranking, who has worked in search for almost 20 years, explains the principles behind our algorithm.
Pop quiz. Get ready. You're only going to have a few milliseconds to answer this question, so look sharp. Here goes: "know the way to San Jose?" Now display the answer on a screen that’s about 14 inches wide and 12 inches tall. Find the answer from among billions and billions of documents. Wait a second - is this for directions or are we talking about the song? Too late. Just find the answer and display it. Now on to the next question. Because you'll have to answer hundreds of millions each day to do well at this test. And in case you find yourself getting too good at it, don’t worry: at least 20% of those questions you get every day you’ll have never seen before. Sound hard? Welcome to the wild world of search at Google. More specifically, welcome to the world of ranking.
Google ranking is a collection of algorithms used to seek out relevant and useful results for a user's query. There's a ton that goes into building a state-of-the-art ranking system like ours. Our algorithms use hundreds of different signals to pick the top results for any given query. Signals are indicators of relevance, and they include items as simple as the words on a webpage or more complex calculations such as the authoritativeness of other sites linking to any given page. Those signals and our algorithms are in constant flux, and are constantly being improved. On average, we make one or two changes to them every day. Lately, I’ve been reading about whether regulators should look into dictating how search engines like Google conduct their ranking. While the debate unfolds about government-regulated search, let me provide some general thinking behind our approach to ranking. Future ranking experts (inside or outside government) might find it helpful. Our philosophy has three main elements:
1. Algorithmically-generated results.
2. No query left behind.
3. Keep it simple.
After nearly two decades, I’ve lost count of how many times I've been asked why Google chooses to generate its search results algorithmically. Here's how we see it: the web is built by people. You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are utilizing all this human contribution through our algorithms to order and rank our results. We think that's a much better solution than a hand-arranged one. Other search engines approach this differently -- selecting some results one at a time, manually curating what you see on the page. We believe that approach which relies heavily on an individual's tastes and preferences just doesn't produce the quality and relevant ranking that our algorithms do. And given the hundreds of millions of queries we have to handle every day, it wouldn't be feasible to handle each by hand anyway.
This brings me to the next point: leaving no query behind. Usually once I've explained to people the thinking behind algorithmically-generated results, some will ask me, "But what if you do a search, and the results you see are just plain lousy? Why wouldn't you just go in there by hand and change them?" The part of this question that's valid is in terms of lousy results. It happens. It happens all the time. Every day we get the right answers for people, and every day we get stumped. And we love getting stumped. Because more often than not, a broken query is just a symptom of a potential improvement to be made to our ranking algorithm. Improving the underlying algorithm not only improves that one query, it improves an entire class of queries, and often for all languages around the world in over 100 countries. I should add, however, that we do have clear written policies for websites that are included in our results, and we do take action on sites that are in violation of our policies or for a small number of other reasons (such as legal requirements, child porn, spam, viruses/malware, etc.). But those cases are quite different from the notion of rearranging the page you see one result at a time.
Finally, simplicity. This seems pretty obvious. Isn't it the desire of all system architects to keep their systems simple? We work very hard to keep our system simple without compromising on the quality of results. This is an ongoing effort, and a worthy one. Our commitment to simplicity has allowed us innovate quickly, and it shows.
Ultimately, search is nowhere near a solved problem. Although I've been at this for almost two decades now, I'd still guess that search isn't quite out of its infancy yet. The science is probably just about at the point where we're crawling. Soon we'll walk. I hope that in my lifetime, I'll see search enter its adolescence.
In the meantime, we're working hard at our ongoing pop quizzes. Here's one last one: "search engine." In 0.14 seconds from among a few hundred million pages, our initial results are: AltaVista, Dogpile Web Search, Bing and Ask.com. I guess I'd better get back to work.
Pop quiz. Get ready. You're only going to have a few milliseconds to answer this question, so look sharp. Here goes: "know the way to San Jose?" Now display the answer on a screen that’s about 14 inches wide and 12 inches tall. Find the answer from among billions and billions of documents. Wait a second - is this for directions or are we talking about the song? Too late. Just find the answer and display it. Now on to the next question. Because you'll have to answer hundreds of millions each day to do well at this test. And in case you find yourself getting too good at it, don’t worry: at least 20% of those questions you get every day you’ll have never seen before. Sound hard? Welcome to the wild world of search at Google. More specifically, welcome to the world of ranking.
Google ranking is a collection of algorithms used to seek out relevant and useful results for a user's query. There's a ton that goes into building a state-of-the-art ranking system like ours. Our algorithms use hundreds of different signals to pick the top results for any given query. Signals are indicators of relevance, and they include items as simple as the words on a webpage or more complex calculations such as the authoritativeness of other sites linking to any given page. Those signals and our algorithms are in constant flux, and are constantly being improved. On average, we make one or two changes to them every day. Lately, I’ve been reading about whether regulators should look into dictating how search engines like Google conduct their ranking. While the debate unfolds about government-regulated search, let me provide some general thinking behind our approach to ranking. Future ranking experts (inside or outside government) might find it helpful. Our philosophy has three main elements:
1. Algorithmically-generated results.
2. No query left behind.
3. Keep it simple.
After nearly two decades, I’ve lost count of how many times I've been asked why Google chooses to generate its search results algorithmically. Here's how we see it: the web is built by people. You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are utilizing all this human contribution through our algorithms to order and rank our results. We think that's a much better solution than a hand-arranged one. Other search engines approach this differently -- selecting some results one at a time, manually curating what you see on the page. We believe that approach which relies heavily on an individual's tastes and preferences just doesn't produce the quality and relevant ranking that our algorithms do. And given the hundreds of millions of queries we have to handle every day, it wouldn't be feasible to handle each by hand anyway.
This brings me to the next point: leaving no query behind. Usually once I've explained to people the thinking behind algorithmically-generated results, some will ask me, "But what if you do a search, and the results you see are just plain lousy? Why wouldn't you just go in there by hand and change them?" The part of this question that's valid is in terms of lousy results. It happens. It happens all the time. Every day we get the right answers for people, and every day we get stumped. And we love getting stumped. Because more often than not, a broken query is just a symptom of a potential improvement to be made to our ranking algorithm. Improving the underlying algorithm not only improves that one query, it improves an entire class of queries, and often for all languages around the world in over 100 countries. I should add, however, that we do have clear written policies for websites that are included in our results, and we do take action on sites that are in violation of our policies or for a small number of other reasons (such as legal requirements, child porn, spam, viruses/malware, etc.). But those cases are quite different from the notion of rearranging the page you see one result at a time.
Finally, simplicity. This seems pretty obvious. Isn't it the desire of all system architects to keep their systems simple? We work very hard to keep our system simple without compromising on the quality of results. This is an ongoing effort, and a worthy one. Our commitment to simplicity has allowed us innovate quickly, and it shows.
Ultimately, search is nowhere near a solved problem. Although I've been at this for almost two decades now, I'd still guess that search isn't quite out of its infancy yet. The science is probably just about at the point where we're crawling. Soon we'll walk. I hope that in my lifetime, I'll see search enter its adolescence.
In the meantime, we're working hard at our ongoing pop quizzes. Here's one last one: "search engine." In 0.14 seconds from among a few hundred million pages, our initial results are: AltaVista, Dogpile Web Search, Bing and Ask.com. I guess I'd better get back to work.
Posted by: Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
Update 2 March, 10:30am
First of all, let me thank everyone for their kind comments and honest views in this discussion. Gary, I love search, after having done search for almost 20 years, I still come into work every morning like a kid going to a candy store. Alongside my passion for search, one fact that keeps me so excited is that what was science fiction in search research twenty years ago is now coming to fruition at Google. The semantic systems we have built are something I didn't expect to build in my lifetime. Secondly, Google has given me an environment where researchers like me can practice search in its pure algorithmic form. I can't put in words how incredibly satisfying this combination is for a search geek like me :-)
Posted by: Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
Posted by: Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
Minggu, 10 Januari 2010
Meeting the EU's 2020 challenge
New years start with resolutions and a new decade calls for setting a decade long goal. A new European Commission takes office this month and it has published an ambitious agenda aimed at making sure Europe stays out in front of the globally competitive race in 2020. Entitled the EU2020 Communication, the Commission proposes "a new sustainable social market economy, a smarter, greener economy where our prosperity will result from innovation and from using resources better, and where knowledge will be the key input."
The Commission has asked for comments on its ideas and today we are making public our contribution.
We endorse the 2020 agenda, particularly its emphasis on planting the seeds for a flowering of the knowledge economy. But we are concerned that the Commission agenda is not sufficiently radical to cope with a fundamental, paradigm-shifting transformation. This blog is itself (albeit a very modest) part of that change.
This shift opens up dramatic new vistas, for entrepreneurs and consumers. Anybody with a good idea can create - and profit. Barriers to entry are low to non-existent - for example, many business models are based on smart evaluations of existing databases. The need for big investments are minimized. New pop stars such as Susan Boyle are created overnight on YouTube. Software start-ups are standing on the shoulders of open source coders. Google itself started little more than a decade ago in a garage.
If the paradigm is changing, it is no surprise that regulation needs to be reviewed to ensure that is supports creativity, innovation, respect of fundamental rights in this world. It is unlikely that overarching policy goals change, but the means to attaining them might well. Our response begins to explore that territory, while knowing that much deeper policy discussion will be an exciting feature of the new Commission.
Europe’s Heads of State will provide their views on the 2020 agenda at a summit in March. The Commission then will begin to work on legislative proposals for the member countries and European Parliament to approve. Google is of course in regular contact with all three institutions to promote the ideas and views contained in our response. Our hope is for Europe to lay the policy framework so the world’s next Google may be born on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Policy.
The Commission has asked for comments on its ideas and today we are making public our contribution.
We endorse the 2020 agenda, particularly its emphasis on planting the seeds for a flowering of the knowledge economy. But we are concerned that the Commission agenda is not sufficiently radical to cope with a fundamental, paradigm-shifting transformation. This blog is itself (albeit a very modest) part of that change.
This shift opens up dramatic new vistas, for entrepreneurs and consumers. Anybody with a good idea can create - and profit. Barriers to entry are low to non-existent - for example, many business models are based on smart evaluations of existing databases. The need for big investments are minimized. New pop stars such as Susan Boyle are created overnight on YouTube. Software start-ups are standing on the shoulders of open source coders. Google itself started little more than a decade ago in a garage.
If the paradigm is changing, it is no surprise that regulation needs to be reviewed to ensure that is supports creativity, innovation, respect of fundamental rights in this world. It is unlikely that overarching policy goals change, but the means to attaining them might well. Our response begins to explore that territory, while knowing that much deeper policy discussion will be an exciting feature of the new Commission.
Europe’s Heads of State will provide their views on the 2020 agenda at a summit in March. The Commission then will begin to work on legislative proposals for the member countries and European Parliament to approve. Google is of course in regular contact with all three institutions to promote the ideas and views contained in our response. Our hope is for Europe to lay the policy framework so the world’s next Google may be born on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Policy.
Selasa, 15 Desember 2009
Boosting user choice for browsers
The European Commission today announced an important decision designed to inject more competition into the crucial market for Internet browsers. Under the Commission decision, more than 100 million Europeans will soon receive an opportunity to download a new browser. On both new and old computers that run Internet Explorer, a ballot screen will pop up on their computers displaying icons of the major browser makers and allowing them to choose among them with a simple click.Browsers are critical to the Internet; they enable us to surf the web, search, chat, email, watch videos, or connect to our social networks. The game changing apps of the past few years -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others -- have all been built online. Most of the modern computing experience already happens inside the browser and many of the remaining computing tasks inside the PC soon could be done more efficiently and elegantly online in the "cloud."
Most people already spend more time using their browsers than they do in their cars. If unleashed, we believe PC browsers could allow an exponential impact on Internet innovation. That's why we launched our own browser Chrome and why we are soon launching a full-fledged browser operating system called Chrome OS, which will further increase the speed, simplicity and security of online computing.
In coming months, millions of Europeans will have an opportunity to learn more about the importance of browsers. We plan to continue educating consumers by participating in initiatives such as the site www.whatbrowser.org and opening our own dialogue with users, confident that more competition in the browser space will mean a better user experience for people everywhere.
Posted By Sundar Pichai, Vice President Product Management
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