A New Google Docs Homepage

As previously anticipated, Google Docs has a new homepage that's better matched for managing files, not just editable documents.

 There's a sidebar that shows a small thumbnail and some helpful information about the selected file. Google added new filters for images and videos, for public and private files, but dropped the higher search form, which was more difficult to use. The drawback is that there are many search features that are no longer obtainable in the border and you need to use operators to get them back.

The slideshow feature rented from Google Wave is one of the most useful additions:

For some reason, Google Docs has a new name for folders: they're now called collections. "Collections are designed to unite the best features of labels and folders. A file can live in multiple collections, just like with Gmail labels. Collections can also be stored hierarchically, just like folders on your desktop. And of course, collections can be shared, just like you can share docs," explains Google. Technically speaking, none of these features is new, but it's much easier to add a file to multiple folders collections. Unfortunately, Google's new terms will probably confuse users and many people won't understand that clicking "Organize" lets you add a file to a collection.

Google also dropped checkboxes, so now it's much more difficult to select multiple files: you need to use Shift for adjacent selections or Control for scattered files (Cmd if you're using a Mac).

Another new feature is priority sorting, which orders files based on importance. For example, a starred document that has been last rationalized 5 hours ago is likely to rank higher than a more recent document that hasn't been starred. Google says that it's like Gmail's Priority Inbox, but there's an important difference: Gmail always sorts conversations by date.

Overall, the new Google Docs homepage is a mixed bag. Google tries to morph Google Docs into an online storage service, while moving away from the initial goal of the service: editing documents online. Suddenly Google Docs is no longer an suitable name for the service, 1 GB of free storage is not enough, the APIs are no longer useful because they're limited to editable documents and Google's applications seem incomplete because they can't handle all the files that can be uploaded. The new homepage can't address these issues, but it manages to make the interface more complicated: now it's a lot easier to open a file when you want to select it and to select the file when you want to open it.

Tip: If you don't like the new interface, there's an option at the top of the page that lets you temporarily switch to the old version.

Google Filters Suggestions connected with Copyright Infringement

Google started to filter search suggestions that include terms connected with copyright infringement like "torrent", "bittorrent", "rapidshare", "megaupload". It's a greasy slope and Google's suggestions will be less useful since they'll no longer comprise many popular searches.

Last month, Google explained that this is one of the changes future to address copyright infringement. "We will prevent terms that are intimately associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete. While it's hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we'll do our best to stop Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose."

Blacklisting keywords like "torrent" is a awful way to prevent copyright infringement since users can forever type queries without Google's help. The main result is that Google will appear to be broken and users will no longer trust the suggestions because they're suppressed. Last year, Google started to become politically correct by removing the suggestions for queries like [why are muslim]. There will forever be complaints about the suggestions, but starting to randomly blacklist keywords opens a can of worms and makes it easy to remove other contentious suggestions. As Mashable says, "this is a subtle form of censorship, and at first look it seems trivial. However, even though the censorship is slight, it still indicates Google's willingness to change its search protocols to satisfy the needs of a convinced business group, in this case members of the entertainment industry."

Google doesn't blacklist "pirate bay", "isohunt", "mediafire", "cracks", "serial numbers", "keygen" and there's a simple trick to bypass the obtainable filters: start your queries using the blacklisted keywords (for example: [torrent ubuntu 10.10]).

Gmail Desktop Notifications

If you use Google Chrome, you can enable a new Gmail feature that shows desktop notifications for new messages. Go to "Settings", and enable chat notifications and mail notifications to see a small bubble when you get a new message. If you get a lot of messages, it's a good idea to only enable notifications for important messages.

The nice thing is that the notifications are displayed even when you're visiting a different site or the Chrome window is minimized. Gmail's blog mentions an important use case: "you've probably missed an important chat message because you weren't looking at your Gmail window when it came in".

Unfortunately, you'll no longer see the notifications if you close Gmail or Google Chrome, so this isn't a perfect replacement for Gmail Notifier. This issue could be solved by background web apps, a new Chrome feature that allows installed web apps to run in the background.

Right now, desktop notifications are only available in Google Chrome, but this feature has been implemented in WebKit and there's a W3C draft for web notifications. Google Calendar has a similar feature as part of the "Gentle reminders" experiment.

Explore Yad Vashem’s Holocaust archives online

In honor of the UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, we’re partnering with Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based center for detection the Holocaust's victims and survivors, to bring their collections of photographs and documents to the web.

On a trip to Jerusalem three years ago, Jonathan Rosenberg visited Yad Vashem. Struck by the museum's vast historical record housed inside the physical building, he hoped Google could do something powerful to showcase this in order. Inspired by the challenge, a few of us, in our “20% time,” in progress working with Yad Vashem and finally grew our effort into a full project, introducing a YouTube channel in 2008 and now this collections site.

Within the archive you will find more than 130,000 images in full declaration. You can search for them via a custom search engine on Yad Vashem’s collections site. And by using experimental optical character acknowledgment (OCR), we’ve transcribed the text on many images, making them even more discoverable on the web. This means that if you search for the name of a family member who was in the Holocaust, you might find a link to an image on the Yad Vashem site.

To experience the new archive features yourself, try penetrating for the term [rena weiser], the name of a Jewish refugee. You’ll find a link to a visa issued to her by the Consulate of Chile in France. OCR technology made this picture discoverable to those searching for her.

Yad Vashem encourages you to add personal stories about images that have sense for you in the “share your thoughts” section below each item. Doron Avni, a fellow Googler, has previously added a story. He found a photograph of his grandfather taken right away after his release from a Nazi prison. His grandfather had vowed that if he should survive, he would right away have his picture taken to preserve the memory of his experience in the Holocaust. He stitched the photo into his coat, an act that later saved his life. After beating in the forest for a year, Russian soldiers mistook him for a German enemy, but released him once they saw this picture.

The Yad Vashem partnership is part of our larger effort to bring significant cultural and historical collections online. We’ve been concerned in similar projects in the past including digitizing major libraries in Europe, collections at the Prado Museum in Madrid, and the LIFE photo archive. We encourage organizations involved in partnering with us in our archiving efforts to enter their information in this form.

We’re proud to be initiation this significant archive that will allow people to discover images that are part of their inheritance, and will aid people worldwide researching the Holocaust.

Google Navigation Bar Switch

Google made a small modify to the navigation bar used for its non-search services: the link to Google Reader was enthused to the "more" drop-down, while the link to Picasa Web Albums was brought back to the main bar. At some point, both links were incorporated in the main bar.

Google's Brian Rose said that the Picasa Web team is working on "some fun stuff" and we'll expectantly see some important changes in the near future. Meanwhile, Google Reader's team posted on Twitter that "the Reader link at the top of Gmail (and other sites) was accidentally detached. It's upcoming back soon, we promise."

It's still astonishing to see that Google's navigation bar is not customizable and you can't add your favorite Google services. Google experienced a customizable bar back in 2006, but this feature was quickly deserted.

Our big gift for small businesses

To kick off 2011, we wanted to thank a few small businesses for taking the first step toward enhancing their online presence—and to provide additional resources for achieving this goal. So over the holiday season, we paid a surprise visit to five small businesses who recently started advertising their businesses online: Create A Cook and Twinkle Star in Massachusetts, Ramy’s Garage and Atlas Flooring in Texas, and Cloud 9 Frozen Yogurt in Georgia. These small businesses span several industries, but their founders share one common goal: to expand beyond their brick-and-mortar storefronts and into the world of e-commerce.

To help, we gave them each of them $100,000 in AdWords spend for 2011 as well as free consultations with AdWords representatives. Because we know online presence means more than just AdWords, we’ll also be providing them with web consultations, wireless service for the year as well as a few other little surprises. See footage from our surprise visit below:

We’re looking forward to making big investments in small businesses far beyond these lucky five. Small businesses have long benefited from Google products and services; now our hope is that all small business owners can have greater access to the tools and training they need to develop a cohesive strategy for doing more business online. We started last year by creating the Google Small Business Center and asking small business owners about their biggest wishes for 2011. We received an overwhelming response from business owners who, like the owners of these shops, want to do more business in the clouds in 2011.

In the meantime, check the Google Small Business Blog for updates, and if you’re a business owner, visit the Google Small Business Center for information on how you can bring your business online in 2011.

Google's New CEO: Larry Page

Eric Schmidt announced today that Larry Page will become Google's CEO.

Larry will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths, and starting from April 4 he will take charge of our day-to-day operations as Google's Chief Executive Officer. In this new role I know he will merge Google's technology and business vision brilliantly. I am enormously proud of my last decade as CEO, and I am certain that the next 10 years under Larry will be even better! Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead.

Sergey Brin's new title will be Co-Founder and he will work on strategic projects, while Eric Schmidt will be the Executive Chairman. "I will focus wherever I can add the greatest value: externally, on the deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership that are increasingly important given Google's global reach; and internally as an advisor to Larry and Sergey," explains Eric Schmidt, who became Google's CEO in August 2001.

Here's an interesting excerpt from Google's 2004 SEC filling:

We run Google as a triumvirate. Sergey and I have worked closely together for the last eight years, five at Google. Eric, our CEO, joined Google three years ago. The three of us run the company collaboratively with Sergey and me as Presidents. The structure is unconventional, but we have worked successfully in this way.

To facilitate timely decisions, Eric, Sergey and I meet daily to update each other on the business and to focus our collaborative thinking on the most important and immediate issues. Decisions are often made by one of us, with the others being briefed later. This works because we have tremendous trust and respect for each other and we generally think alike. Because of our intense long term working relationship, we can often predict differences of opinion among the three of us. We know that when we disagree, the correct decision is far from obvious. For important decisions, we discuss the issue with a larger team appropriate to the task. Differences are resolved through discussion and analysis and by reaching consensus. Eric, Sergey and I run the company without any significant internal conflict, but with healthy debate. As different topics come up, we often delegate decision-making responsibility to one of us.

We hired Eric as a more experienced complement to Sergey and me to help us run the business. Eric was CTO of Sun Microsystems. He was also CEO of Novell and has a Ph.D. in computer science, a very unusual and important combination for Google given our scientific and technical culture. This partnership among the three of us has worked very well and we expect it to continue. The shared judgments and extra energy available from all three of us has significantly benefited Google.

Eric has the legal responsibilities of the CEO and focuses on management of our vice presidents and the sales organization. Sergey focuses on engineering and business deals. I focus on engineering and product management.