Bringing the Power of Google Earth to the Browser

Announcement
May 28, 2008

Google deeply believes in the value of being open, so we’ve decided to expand the reach of Google Earth by bringing it to the browser. Today at Google I/O, we’re unveiling the Google Earth API and browser plug-in. As the latest member of our Maps API family, the Google Earth API allows web developers to quickly and easily turn their web pages into 3D map applications. They can now use the Earth as their canvas and apply their creative vision to a geographically rich, 3D environment, leveraging the same technologies we use in the desktop Google Earth client. For consumers this means that they will soon see Google Earth in many more places around the web – perhaps even their favorite web site.

More and more users are interested in seeing the world’s information in a geographic context, which has lead to the rise of the Geoweb, a collection of user-generated content (e.g. photos, videos and so on) associated with a given location. Its not just about sharing pictures of a family vacation anymore. Now people can visually convey the miles logged while traveling to Patagonia or the Seychelles Islands, for example.

The Google Maps API, with over 150,000 developer sites, and the Google Earth client, with over 400 million downloads, are both tremendously successful tools to help users visualize this Geoweb of content. Now that we have brought the Google Earth API to the developer community, we can only imagine what wonderfully creative new web applications will be developed.

Key features:

• Embed Google Earth inside any web page with only a few lines of code.
• Use the JavaScript API to enable rich Earth-based web applications.
• Manipulate KML and the 3D environment: create polygons, lines, placemarks, and more.
• Convert your existing Google Maps API site to 3D with as little as one line of code.
• View the thousands of existing 3D buildings, or add your own 3D models.
• Switch to Google Sky mode for high-res imagery of stars, planets, and galaxies.

Check out the LatLong blog for more details about today’s announcement.

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Google App Engine to Announce Open Sign-ups, Pricing Plans, and New APIs at Google I/O

Announcement
May 27, 2008

Google Developer Conference Starts Wednesday in San Francisco; Highlights a Richer, Maturing Web Platform

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 27, 2008) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is getting ready to welcome more than 2900 developers to the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Google I/O™, the company’s largest developer event of the year. The event opens with a keynote speech on Wednesday, May 28, and runs through Thursday, May 29, with nearly 100 in-depth technical sessions about Google’s own developer products, and general web application development.

Google’s developer products are devoted to making it easier for developers to build for the web. In particular, Wednesday’s keynote speech will explore three areas of Google investment that – in close collaboration with the larger web community – aim to enable increasingly innovative and rich web applications:

• Making clouds of computing power more accessible to all developers
• Making the client – i.e., the browser – more capable and more powerful
• Ensuring the connectivity that enables the client and the cloud to work in harmony

"After years of competition among platforms, the web has won because it’s open, because it’s ubiquitous, and because there’s a passionate community working together to move it forward," said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for developer products at Google. "Openness is great for developers and for users because it knocks down hurdles to building great applications, and because it speeds the next wave of innovation by letting good ideas be shared. The web doesn’t depend on any one API or tool or product, from Google or anyone else. What makes the real difference is the aggregate effect of us all working together, with open standards and open source."

Google App Engine: Making It Easy to Build, Maintain, and Scale Web Apps

Google App Engine™ enables developers to build their web apps on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s own applications. So developers eager to build highly scalable web apps will be especially pleased with the following piece of Google I/O news: Google App Engine is announcing open sign-ups. More than 150,000 developers have joined the product’s waiting list over the past 6 weeks; on Wednesday, Google App Engine will be available to everyone – no waiting required.

Google App Engine is also announcing its pricing plans (effective later this year) for purchasing additional computing resources; this is something developers have been asking for ever since the initial launch. The product will be free to get started, and in the current preview release apps will continue to be restricted to that free quota. Later this year, once the preview period has ended, developers can expect to pay:

• Free quota to get started: 500MB storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million pageviews per month
• $0.10 – $0.12 per CPU core-hour
• $0.15 – $0.18 per GB-month of storage
• $0.11 – $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth
• $0.09 – $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth

Lastly, and likewise in response to developer feedback, Google App Engine will provide two new APIs in the coming weeks. The image-manipulation API enables developers to scale, rotate, and crop images on the server, and the memcache API is a high-performance caching layer designed to make page rendering faster for developers.

More information about Google App Engine is available at code.google.com/appengine/.

Building more powerful, faster AJAX applications: Google Web Toolkit 1.5 Release Candidate

With Google Web Toolkit™, developers can develop and debug web applications in the familiar Java programming language, and then deploy them as highly optimized JavaScript. In doing so, developers sidestep common AJAX headaches like browser compatibility, and enjoy significant performance and productivity gains. Google Health is one recently launched application to use Google Web Toolkit.

Google Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1.5 will be available later this week and includes Java 5 language support so that developers can enjoy using the full capabilities of the Java 5 syntax. These capabilities include Java generics, enumerated types, annotations, auto-boxing, variable parameter lists, and more. The compiler in Google Web Toolkit 1.5 produces faster code than ever, delivering performance gains big enough for end users to notice; indeed, it is often the case that the compiler produces faster JavaScript than a person would write by hand in JavaScript. Google Web Toolkit 1.5 accomplishes this by performing deep inlining, better dead code elimination, and other forms of enhanced static analysis.

Google Web Toolkit also continues to provide a rich and growing set of libraries that help developers build world-class AJAX, including thoroughly-tested reusable libraries for implementing user interfaces, data structures, client/server communication, internationalization, testing, and accessibility. More information about Google Web Toolkit is available at code.google.com/webtoolkit/.

Innovation in the Open: At the Event

Google I/O will include a mix of practical, hands-on advice for building web apps as well as opportunities to learn about and discuss emerging trends. Sessions with top Google engineers will cover tools developed both inside and outside of Google. Topic areas will include:

• AJAX & JavaScript
• APIs & Tools
• Social
• Mobile
• Maps & Geo

More information about Google I/O is available at code.google.com/io/. Google will be accepting online registrations until the evening of May 27th and on-site the day of the event.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.google.com.

Media Contact:

Google Press Center
press@google.com
+1.650.930.3555

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Google, Google I/O, Google App Engine, and Google Web Toolkit are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Doodle 4 Google Competition Winner Announced

Announcement
May 21, 2008

Grace Moon, a 6th grade student from Canyon Middle School, has been announced as the national winner of the Doodle 4 Google competition. The announcement was made by Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, at a celebration today in Mountain View, CA for the 40 regional winners of the competition and their families.

What is a doodle? Doodles are the quirky logo designs we often feature on the Google homepage to celebrate holidays, special events or birthdays of artists. This year, we launched a contest open to all K-12 students in the U.S. to imagine their own version of the Google logo, inspired by the theme "What If…?" Grace’s doodle was chosen from over 16,000 doodles submitted by students across the country, and was selected based on artistic merit, creativity, and expression of the theme.

The four national finalists (one from each grade group) were decided by an online public vote held May 12-18. Nearly 4 million votes were cast. The national winner was chosen by Marissa Mayer and Dennis Hwang, Google’s chief doodler.

The winning doodle is titled "Up in the Clouds" and "expresses a world in the sky," according to Grace. In addition to having her doodle on the Google homepage for a day, Grace will receive a $10,000 college scholarship, and a $25,000 technology grant for her school. The champion doodler has been drawing since she could hold a crayon. Grace enjoys art, but her favorite subject in school is math. She wants to combine both her loves and become an artist and scientist someday.

The three national finalists, listed below, will each receive a laptop computer. To see all the finalists’ doodles, go to www.google.com/doodle4google.

National Finalists

Grades K-3
Spencer Norton
Ashbrook Elementary School
Lumberton, NJ

Grades 7-9
Rebecca Olene
Pioneer Ridge Freshmen Center
Carver, Minnesota

Grades 10-12
Gabriel Kitzman
Elbert School Dist. #200
Kiowa, Colorado

The customization of the Google logo started in 1999, and these doodles are now designed almost exclusively by Google Webmaster Dennis Hwang, whose work is seen by millions every time he exhibits on the Google homepage. Dennis has creatively depicted worldwide events, anniversaries and holidays with doodles that incorporate the Google logo for the world to celebrate.

More information is available at: www.google.com/doodle4google.

Thanks to all of the other thousands of doodlers who participated in the competition. Your creativity inspires all of us!

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Google to Offer Live Webcast of Factory Tour of Search Press Gathering

Announcement
May 16, 2008

Who: Google Inc.

What: Live webcast of Google’s upcoming Factory Tour of Search press event to be held at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.

When: Monday, May 19th, 9:30am – 12:00pm PDT

Where: www.google.com/press/podium.html

Why: Google to offer an insider’s perspective on Search and provide an update on Google Health. Speakers will include Product Management Directors R.J. Pittman, Carter Maslan, Johanna Wright, and VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer.

Contact:

Eitan Bencuya
press@google.com
+1.650.930.3555

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

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Google is a trademark of Google Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Google to Present at the Goldman Sachs Ninth Annual Internet Conference

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – May 14, 2008 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that Nicholas Fox, Director of Business Product Management for Ads Quality and Bidding, and Neal Mohan, Director of Product Management for Ad Serving Platforms, will participate in a question-and-answer session at the Goldman Sachs Ninth Annual Internet Conference. The session is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time / 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, May 22, 2008.

To access the live audio webcast of the presentation, please visit investor.google.com/webcast.html.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Contact:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650.253.7663
marias@google.com

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Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Google to Present at the NASDAQ OMX 21st Investor Program

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – May 13, 2008 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Operations, will participate in a question-and-answer session at the NASDAQ OMX 21st Investor Program in London. The session is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time / 6:45 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, May 20, 2008.

To access the live audio webcast of the presentation, please visit investor.google.com/webcast.html.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Contact:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650.253.7663
marias@google.com

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Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Previewing Google Friend Connect: Website owners can make any site social

Announcement
May 12, 2008

Easily insert social features to make "any app, any site, any friends" a reality

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 12, 2008) – Tonight at Campfire One at the Googleplex (code.google.com/campfire/), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social – and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming – picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

To illustrate, independent musician Ingrid Michaelson has added music features from iLike with Google Friend Connect and is now able to run the iLike OpenSocial application on her official website (www.ingridmichaelson.com). As a result, starting tonight, fans who visit Ingrid’s site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid’s website. With Google Friend Connect, people will be able to enjoy their favorite features with their friends on any website across the web.

"We want to bring ourselves to every eyeball, not bring every eyeball to us," said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. "Friend Connect is a significant opportunity for iLike, artists, and fans. The iLike Artist Dashboard™ will be the first content-management system that allows artists not only to post their songs, concerts, and videos to every leading social network from one dashboard, but also to simultaneously manage the content on their own websites."

Google Friend Connect has been developed to lower two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both these issues.

"Google Friend Connect is about helping the ‘long tail’ of sites become more social," said David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google. "Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards – OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality."

For Site Owners: Traffic and User Engagement

Without requiring coding experience, Google Friend Connect gives site owners a way to attract and engage more people by giving visitors a way to connect with friends on their websites.

• Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
• Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
• Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.

Google Friend Connect is in a preview release, available tonight after Campfire One on a handful of whitelisted websites. All site owners interested in learning more about Google Friend Connect and signing up for the wait list can visit www.google.com/friendconnect/ starting tonight. In the weeks ahead we will be turning on more sites, adding more social applications, and integrating feedback from site owners and developers.

Google I/O

Learn more about Google Friend Connect, OpenSocial, and other social initiatives at Google I/O, a two-day developer gathering about building the next generation of web applications. It takes place May 28-29 at Moscone West, San Francisco. Register now for Google I/O at code.google.com/events/io/.

Conference Call Information

Google will host a conference call to discuss this announcement. The conference call will be held on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (12:30 p.m. Eastern Time). To access the conference call, please dial +1 (800) 776-0087 within the United States and +1 (913) 312-1509 from international locations. Replays of both calls will be available until midnight Eastern Time, May 19, 2008 at +1 (888) 203-1112 domestically and +1 (719) 457-0820 internationally. The confirmation code for the replay of the call is 7571843.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Media Contact:

Sean Carlson
Google
+1 650 253 1173
seanc@google.com

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Google Apps extends protection to web surfing and remote workers

Announcement
May 8, 2008

Google today announced a web security product that makes it easy and affordable for companies of all sizes to provide Internet security to users in any location. Google Web Security™ for Enterprise provides real-time malware protection and URL filtering with policy enforcement and reporting. An additional feature extends the same protections to users working remotely on laptops in hotels, cafes, and even guest networks.

"One of the benefits of Google Apps is the protection it provides for communication and collaboration within businesses," said Scott Petry, director of product management, Google. "Now companies can extend that protection to more of their users’ Internet activities, whether they’re surfing the web at the office or the airport."

Google Web Security allows companies to secure their networks from web-based malware; enforce Internet use policies at the user, workgroup or company level; and receive comprehensive reporting on all web activities. Since employees are most vulnerable when they’re working outside the office, companies have the option of adding protection for off-network users. And because the product is delivered as a service, those remote workers get the protection wherever they are, without having to sign on to their corporate network.

The product is Powered by Postini™ with technology from ScanSafe, and accessible from the same administration console used for Google Apps security and compliance messaging services. Google Web Security is available in North America and Europe. Go to www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/security/web.html for more information.

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Sprint and Google Expand Relationship to Enable Richer Mobile Experience and more Choices for Sprint Customers

Sprint Handsets to Feature Easy Access to Google Mobile Search, Google Maps for Mobile, YouTube and More

Overland Park – May 7, 2008 – Sprint and Google [NASDAQ: GOOG] today announced a partnership aimed at more deeply integrating Google applications and services into Sprint customers’ mobile experience. As part of the deal, Google™ will become Sprint’s preferred mobile search provider and Sprint users will have easier access to Google Maps™ for mobile, YouTube™ and more.

Sprint and Google are committed to providing users with the most dynamic mobile experience possible. Both companies have actively advocated the importance of an open mobile ecosystem and understand that users should have more choice when it comes to selecting and accessing content on a mobile phone.

"Our partnership with Google is a great example of how Sprint is making the mobile Internet experience even more customer-friendly and useful to our customers," said Kevin Packingham, vice president of product management at Sprint. "Sprint looks forward to extending its partnership with Google, and to bringing customers a mobile experience enhanced by the speed of the Now Network, complimented by the services of Google."

"Google and Sprint have a lot in common when it comes to our vision for the mobile web," said Doug Garland, vice president of product management at Google. "We both believe in openness and providing compelling, easy-to-use mobile services that consumers can use every day. We look forward to working together to deliver a great experience."

With some capabilities available as soon as this summer, the partnership with Google and Sprint offers Sprint customers:

• Google mobile search: Google will become the default search provider for web search and local search (GPS-enabled) on the Sprint portal on customers’ current web-enabled Sprint phones as well as new devices. On select new devices later this year, Sprint customers will be able to bring up a Google search box on their device’s home screen, providing them with one-click access to Google mobile search.
• Google Maps for mobile: Also featured on new Sprint handsets and available on some current smart phones will be Google Maps for mobile, an application that enables users to view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, get driving directions and view real-time traffic information when they’re on the go.
• YouTube: With this new partnership, millions of fun and interesting YouTube videos – as well as all the user’s favorites, videos and channels – will be accessible from select new Sprint handsets.
• Location-enabled search and maps: Sprint will also enable users to take advantage of location data for Google search and Google Maps for mobile, making it even easier for users to discover what’s around them and then figure out how to get there.

Going forward, Sprint and Google will continue to explore ways to provide users with compelling mobile experiences and more application choices.

Today’s announcement extends the two companies’ collaborative history. In November 2006, Sprint and Google made Gmail™ available from the Sprint portal. Late last year, Sprint joined Google as a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance™, which is currently developing the Android™ open mobile platform. And earlier today, the two companies announced that they would contribute to the formation of Clearwire, a company focused on building the first nationwide mobile WiMAX network.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks serving approximately 54 million customers at the end of 2007; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Media Contacts:

Jennifer Walsh Kiefer, Sprint
913-794-2950
jennifer.r.walsh@sprint.com

Michael Kirkland
Google Inc.
415-793-5571
mkirkland@google.com

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Google, Google Maps, Android, Gmail, Open Handset Alliance and YouTube are trademarks of Google Inc. in the United States and / or other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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