This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed. Having been a new dad for six months now, I’ve quickly come to learn two valuable parenting lessons. First, being a father is truly a full-time job—and second, sleep is completely overrated. Whether buying the latest bottles, binkies, blankets and bibs, or just blogging about the whole magical journey, becoming a father has been the most invigorating and moving experience of my lifetime. This week, I’m excited to help introduce our latest search story, New Baby . The video really captures the joys (and costs!) of becoming a new parent. I’d like to share my heart-felt compassion with new dads everywhere (and of course, my wife and the other mothers out there who are the true heroes.) We will all rest when they head off to college—in the meantime, enjoy! Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager

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What to search when you’re expecting

Today at Moscone West in San Francisco, we’re kicking off our largest developer conference of the year, Google I/O . Over two days, 5,000 people from 66 countries will hear from 200 speakers, see 180+ developer demonstrations and participate in more than 90 technical sessions, breakouts and fireside chats to meet engineers from Google and partner companies. At last year’s I/O , we demonstrated the potential of HTML5. Since then, the web has moved from a promising platform to a compelling setting for developers to build apps. This week we’ll celebrate this ongoing evolution of the web and share some of our latest work in moving the web forward and keeping it open. Today we’re announcing Google App Engine for Business , which offers new features that enable companies to build internal applications on the same reliable, scalable and secure infrastructure that we at Google use for our own apps. For greater cloud portability, we’re also teaming up with VMware to make it easier for companies to build rich web apps and deploy them to the cloud of their choice or on-premise. In just one click, users of the new versions of SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Web Toolkit can deploy their application to Google App Engine for Business, a VMware environment or other infrastructure, such as Amazon EC2. There are already lots of great apps out on the web, but there hasn’t been one destination where you could easily find them. Our new Chrome Web Store is an open marketplace for web apps that helps people find the best web applications across the Internet and allows developers to reach new users. We also joined other web companies in announcing WebM , an open web media format project and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec, that we are contributing to the project under a royalty-free license. We’re pleased to share some updates to our APIs too. Last year, we announced the Google Maps API v3 , which was designed to be faster and optimized for mobile devices. Today this API is graduating from Code Labs and is enterprise-ready as part of Google Maps API Premier. We’re also announcing new ways for publishers to improve the relevance of their AdSense ads , a brand-new version of the Feed API with push updates that make the latest PubSubHubbub -enabled feed data available without requiring visitors to refresh pages, and a library of high-quality open-source web fonts, accessible to everyone through the new Google Font API . Finally, last year we introduced a new way to communicate and collaborate called Google Wave. Today we’re opening Wave to everyone — no invitation necessary — at wave.google.com, as part of Google Labs. Google Apps administrators can also enable it for their domains and help groups of people work together more productively. To learn more about this, our many new API features and more open-source code for developers, visit the Wave Developer blog . For lots more about Google I/O 2010, visit http://code.google.com/events/io/ and follow us on the Code Blog , Twitter @googleio (#io2010) and Buzz . Posted by Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering

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Google I/O 2010 Day 1: A more powerful web in more places

On Friday we made our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project — two wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 55,000 homes. These wind farms, developed by NextEra Energy Resources , harness power from one of the world’s richest wind resources in the North Dakota plains and use existing transmission capacity to deliver clean energy to the region, reducing the use of fossil fuels. Through this $38.8 million investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too. To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital. Through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we’ve been pushing for energy policies that strengthen the innovation pipeline, and we’ve been dedicating resources to developing new technologies , including making investments in early-stage renewable energy companies such as eSolar and AltaRock . Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects. A clear windy day at the Ashtabula II wind farm We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production. A couple of us got a chance to climb 80 meters up one of the 113 turbines to see firsthand how the rotating blade motion goes through a gearbox to turn the generator that makes the electricity. The climb to the top also provided a great view of the entire wind farm (don’t worry — we all had harnesses and turned the turbine off!). My colleague Matt takes a rest after the 80-meter climb We look forward to finding more opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects that use the latest technologies to push the envelope for delivering low cost clean energy. We’ll let you know what we find. Posted by Rick Needham, Green Business Operations Manager

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Not merely tilting at windmills — investing in them too

by Sage Lewis I’ve just finished a class where we have gone over the latest trends and happenings in the world of Internet Marketing. We look at the most important changes in Internet marketing over the last week and what they mean to you. This is an in-depth 43 minute interactive class. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Cutting Edge Internet Marketing Class from April 21, 2010

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 couple of weeks we’ve been busy adding new functionality to make communicating and sharing with Google Apps easier than ever, whether you use Google Apps for work, for school or at home. Web clipboard for Google Docs As more and more people are getting work done in the cloud with Google Docs, a common stumbling block has been copying and pasting formatted content between documents, spreadsheets and presentations. On Wednesday we made this a whole lot easier with a web clipboard for Google Docs . Just highlight what you want to copy, select from the web clipboard menu, move to your other Google Docs window and choose what you want to paste from the web clipboard menu. Your pasted content will retain its original formatting so you don’t have to spend time reformatting. New saving buttons in Google Docs One of the most frustrating things about using traditional software is losing your work if something unexpected happens before you remember to save. Google Docs helps solve this problem by frequently saving your latest changes automatically. Still, we’ve heard from people that they want that extra reassurance that autosave is happening, and to be able to manually save their work more easily. New saving buttons in Google Docs do just that. The buttons let you know when your document is fully saved, in the process of being autosaved or has unsaved changes that haven’t been picked up by autosave yet. Now, if there are unsaved changes the “Save now” button is clickable. Google Buzz Last week we launched Google Buzz , a new way to start conversations about things you find interesting, like photos, videos, webpages or whatever might be on your mind. Buzz lets you share right from Gmail, or from your mobile phone. You can connect other sites you use like Twitter, Picasa, and Google Reader, and you can post buzz privately or publicly. Since we released Google Buzz, we quickly made a number of improvements based on input from users, and we’re committed to keep improving it. Individuals can use Google Buzz now, and we plan to make it available to businesses and universities using Google Apps within a few months. Google Apps Script for Google Sites Google Apps Script lets you create programmatic interactions between a whole variety of Google services including contacts, calendars, email, finance data, spreadsheets and more. Businesses often use scripts to automate repetitive processes. Last week, we added Google Sites to the list of products that you can control with scripts. Now, instead of manually updating the content in a site, you can use Google Apps Script to automatically populate pages in your site with calendar data, contact information and data from the other services that work with Google Apps Script. Scripts can even add attachments and be used to update the sharing preferences for your site. Who’s gone Google? With 3,500 employees, Lincoln Property Company is one of the largest property management firms in the United States. Recently, Lincoln Property made the decision to switch to Google Apps from their complex and costly Novell Groupwise email infrastructure. Not only will they save an estimated $200,000 per year, they’ll finally be able to equip every single employee with email, instant messaging and calendars — not just the 950 desk-based workers who previously had email access. The Google Apps train keeps rolling in the education space as well. Seven million students around the world are now using Google Apps at school! DePauw University , Yale University , Davenport University and the College of William and Mary are just a handful of the most recent schools to switch to Google Apps. Hope you’re enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you’re using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog . Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Google Apps highlights – 2/19/2010

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed. From enhancements in real-time search to Vancouver happenings at your fingertips, this week included a number of exciting search launches: Winter Games info in search results As the 2010 Winter Games kick off, we’ve made it easy for you to follow all of the action in Vancouver. Now, when you search for the latest results for your favorite sport, you’ll see the information you’re looking for just above the search results. Looking for the latest schedules? They’re just a search away. And if you’re interested in following how your home country is doing, you can quickly view the latest medal count. All that’s left for you to do is cheer for your favorite team and enjoy the games! Example searches: [ men's hockey ], [ alpine skiing schedule ] and [ medal count ] Google Buzz in real-time search Tuesday, we announced Google Buzz as part of our efforts to help make the web more social. Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting, allowing you to share updates, photos and videos right in Gmail. When we launched Buzz we made sure that we had it integrated into real-time search. Since real-time is all about searching what’s happening right now, including changes to webpages, the latest news articles, new blog posts and fresh microblog content, it only seemed natural to include Buzz. Maps of more countries in search results Many of us use online maps so frequently that it’s easy to forget that many countries lack detailed, street-level digital maps. But thanks to people adding their local knowledge to Google Map Maker , the local search results for places like Romania , Iceland, and Peru now include a map. In fact, as of this week we’re able to show a map everytime we show local search results. As a result, the efforts of global citizen cartographers are really serving the needs of local users, schools, city planners, and tourists. Example search: [ catedral de lima ] Aardvark acquisition This week, you might have seen our announcement that we’ve acquired the technology company Aardvark. Aardvark allows you to easily tap into the knowledge and experience network of your friends and extended network of contacts. The way it works is quite simple — you just send a question in plain English, like you would when speaking with a friend. Aardvark then acts as a hub, figuring out who might be able to answer your question, and then responds with an answer. You can read more about the announcement here , and Aardvark is already available in Google Labs , so you can try it out today. It was a busy week for us in search. See you back here next week! Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

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This week in search 2/14/10

Today, we’re launching a new web search feature that will help you stay in touch with the latest trends on the web. You might already be familiar with Hot Trends , which lists the fastest rising searches on the web at any given hour. Now, when you search Google.com and your query matches one of the top 100 fastest-rising search terms, we’ll show you a graph at the bottom of page, with more information — like how popular the query is, how fast it’s rising over time, and other useful data. Below is a picture of what you’d find today if you searched for [ reina capodici ], who just wed American Idol star Justin Guarini. Or try another example: [ gotthard base tunnel ], which is set to become the longest tunnel in the world. (But make sure you search for these examples today — nothing stays hot for long.) To coincide with this change, we’ve also reduced the number of trends listed on the Google Hot Trends homepage to 40 from 100. This feature, however, will show up for any query that matches the top 100. We hope this change will make for a simpler user experience, and help you focus better on the top, most interesting content. This new feature is available in the U.S. and Japan. We hope it will help you keep up with everything there’s to know about the latest trends online. No more being out of the loop at your office watercooler! Posted by Aaron Wise, Associate Product Manager

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Keep up with the latest trends using Google Search

Sometimes we get so caught up in the latest and greatest trends in online testing that we forget that some people have heard of testing but haven’t had it explained to them in laymen’s terms. Rodney over at Reachd Blog has a great intro to testing that’s perfect for folks who’ve not done testing before and want a quick summary of how testing works. Nice job Rodney! Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

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Testing for Dummies