Monday, 7 July 2008
Protocol Buffers: Our open source data interchange format
Today we have something special for all you coders: we're releasing one of our most widely-used internal development tools. We call it "Protocol Buffers." It's the way we encode almost any sort of structured information which needs to be passed across the network or stored on disk. We thought Protocol Buffers might be useful to other people, too, so we've decided to release it as open source software. Check out the details on the Google Open Source Blog, or head directly to the project page on Google Code.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Tour the Tour de France with Street View
Today marks the beginning of one of my favorite summer events: the Tour de France. I'm always amazed when I hear about the long, steep climbs through mountains or the blistering speeds of the cyclists as they pass through the French countryside. But since most of us can't head over there to watch it in person, we're giving you the next best thing: Street View of the 2008 Tour de France route. Head to google.com/tourdefrance2008 to experience the route stage by stage, and learn more about the images (and check out some of the most breathtaking sights) over on the Lat Long blog.
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Thursday, 3 July 2008
More tools for citizen participation
Political participation isn't just about casting your vote; everyone should be able to become an informed participant instantly. When Americans want to learn about candidates and issues using Google, we find that they want more than one source, and immediate results. Instead of sitting through entire television broadcasts, voters are going online to get their daily dose of politics - as they did during the primaries, when searches for political queries spiked.
We created a page on 2008 US election trends that highlights search queries on candidates by location to show how, during this election season, voters across the nation are getting politically engaged online. Use the Candidate Search Queries map to see which cities are searching more for Obama or McCain, and the News by Candidate tool on the trends page to see the latest headlines on each of the presidential contenders.
Our political outreach efforts are aimed at providing citizens with useful knowledge on where candidates, office holders and advocacy groups stand. As more Americans go online and take simple steps to participate in politics, we aspire to promote democracy and informed participation in the process by equipping voters with useful information through search.