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August 06, 2008
12:36
Google gives us the keys to insightful information
» ‎ Googling Google

Tags: [edit]

If you are someone who can’t get enough data, Google’s new “Insights for Search” (which I’m sure will be renamed to simply “Google Insights” when they realize the current name is too long) is going to be a place that you want to visit. Google Insights for Search takes daily search data from the countries they [...]

0:11
The Monthly Pimp: August Edition
» ‎ 43 Folders

Tags: [edit]
Here’s the latest stuff Merlin’s been up to, here and abroad.
Huh? “Monthly Pimp?”
Meta: New experiment. Everybody hates endless self-promotion. I know I do. So, except where called for by amazingly useful exception, I’d like all “Yay Merlin” stuff that makes it to the content well of the 43f home page (including recent interviews and podcasts, new projects, as well as recent and upcoming appearances of possible interest) to be ganged into a single monthlyish post.

Nota Bene: I’d also like to encourage all my friends with blogs to try a similar experiment in personal curation. Our internet visitors are here to be delighted by useful stuff, not to watch a blogger smell his finger. Right? Exactly. Welcome. And thank you. No, thank you.
Merlin’s Upcoming Stuff
- Start. A Conference for Entrepreneurs. Tomorrow, my pals, Jeff and Bryan are putting on an amazing conference for people who are thinking of doing a startup. It’s very close to sold out, but there’s still time to see me, Mena, Ev, and many more folks talk about how to sensibly take your idea to the web. Register while you still can (it’s cheap). Who knows? You might even get to see something special.
- IzeaFest. In September, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida to talk about how to build a smart blog for smart people without resorting to tricks and games. And, no: I will not be holding up AdSense checks for “Cash Proof.”
For more information about inviting me to speak at your company or event, drop a line.
Merlin: Recently and Elsewhere
- Guestblogging: Blogging at Maximum Fun. For the next couple weeks, me and the other You Look Nice Today “talent” will be guest-blogging over at Jesse’s site; Jesse has apparently fooled a woman into marrying him. (Congrats, J&T)
- Appearance: iPhone DevCamp. Participated in a fun panel with Dom, Mike, and Brian, talking about what we want from iPhone apps, what patterns to replicate, and which pitfalls to avoid. As ever, much love for Remote.
- Interview: Real estate information overload | Inman News. Really enjoyed this interview with Glenn in advance of my talk at the Inman Connect conference a couple weeks back. How can you tell a good interviewer? You talk a lot about things you didn’t realize you were thinking about.
- Interview: “Technology in the Arts” podcast. Was interviewed by a very nice man called Brad about productivity, “branding,” and why editing helps everything not to suck.
Player var so = new SWFObject('/embed/player.swf','mpl','470','20','9'); so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always'); so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true'); so.addParam('flashvars','&file=http://media.libsyn.com/media/themerlinshow/NOTMINE_technologyinthearts_ep_47_2008-08-01.mp3'); so.write('player');

Merlin’s Ongoing Projects
- Podcast: You Look Nice Today. We’re off on walkabout until the end of the month or so, but it’s a great time to catch up on recent episodes. Also the perfect time to go all the way back and start where it all began: Episode 2.
  And, remember: You Look Nice Today is not safe for anything. Not even as a floor wax.
- Blog: Kung Fu Grippe. My favorite recent posts on my personal blog were about MLM videos, the Flip Video camera, My Neighbor Totoro, a fertility monitor, Twyla Tharp’s advice on creativity, and a test of Modomi, featuring The Long Winters.
- Photos: Flickr. People recently enjoyed images of a business offer for YLNT, a banjo, the Dwight Schrute my daughter broke, and a delightful short film that my daughter directed.
- Toots: Twitter. People seemed to like Toots about books, the internet, speakerphones, and my new catchphrase. Then there’s my new nemesis, fakemerlinmann.
Thank you for bravely suffering my pimp. See you next month.

August 05, 2008
23:50
Getting Real 2 update: First draft done, publisher search continues
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

Lots of questions in yesterday’s 37signals Live chat about what’s going on with the new version of Getting Real.

So here’s the deal: The book is well underway. First draft done actually, but there’s still plenty of revising to go. (Rewriting is key after all.) We’re drawing ideas from internal conversations, posts here at SvN, presentations we’ve given, Q&A sessions like yesterday’s chat, press coverage (it’s always interesting to see how an objective party tells our story), etc. It’s a great read already and is sure to get better!

The new version is quite different than the original. Most of the content is new and the focus is different too. The first edition was for a web technology audience. This new version broadens the scope to small businesses and entrepreneurs of all kinds. Inventors, restauranteurs, clothing manufacturers, MBA students, IT workers, retailers, designers, artists, crafts makers, and tons of other people will all find value in the book.

(Note: Someone asked yesterday if people who bought the original book will get a free copy of the new one. Due to the volume of new content in this edition, the answer is no. The name may stay the same, but it’s really a different book.)

We’ve hired a literary agent to represent us and hope to finalize a deal with a publisher soon. We’re looking forward to partnering with a company that really gets it and can help bring the book to a mass audience. If you’re an interested publisher, drop Jason a note at jason at 37signals dot com (subject line: Publish Getting Real). We’ll forward your interest on to our agent.

Also, a big shoutout to Seth Godin for his help and advice re: traditional publishers and agents. His advice for authors is a great read too. (Also worth reading for aspiring authors: Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known by Mark Hurst.)

We’ll keep you posted as things progress. Stay tuned.

23:04
Lunch Poems
» ‎ 43 Folders

Tags: [edit]

Guest post from our pal, Brian, on how one of my favorite poets of the 60s captured interstitial time to make art. —mdm
At the late late party after party we were talking about how you know if you're a writer. I suggested that actually writing routinely was the tip off. Then someone had a better idea: that writers are those who feel guilty about not writing. A first-world problem, to be sure, but if you know any working writers, one of their most beloved hobby horses is that they just don't have time to write. Students, money, speaking engagements, lint, bacon, the Cubs, morning sex. So many things between them and great sentences.
Frank O'Hara didn't seem to have this problem. He made it a point not to be a professional poet, but to write poems and essays and catalog introductions and letters and his own life in the due course of long days he filled equally with chatter, lunches, working at the MOMA, talking on the phone. Kenneth Burke called literature equipment for living, and O'Hara never put his away. He was always making. Sometimes poems, sometimes friends.
He has a slim book of work called Lunch Poems, and you might think of that as his primary mode of composition. While out walking from the museum to get lunch, he'd do a poem. Maybe he'd type it up and stick it in a drawer later. I'm pretty sure that one of my favorites of his (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) was drafted during a ferry ride en route to read with Robert Lowell. That is balls. And it's also a better lesson than maybe any one of O'Hara's works: your creative life is part of your life. When making things is just another open window, you've won.
Here's O'Hara reading Lana Turner.

23:02
Tackling information overload, 10 million documents at a time
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]

Imagine the last time you misplaced an important document right when you needed it most: your plane ticket the day of a flight; your driver's license before the morning commute; the warranty on your radio just as the speakers begin to crackle. A frustrating circumstance, perhaps, but a manageable one given the relatively limited landscape of one's personal items.

Now imagine you can't find a key statistic before a work presentation, a customer detail before a sales pitch, or product spec before a critical design meeting. To find these, you're navigating the opaque universe of your organization's file shares, content systems and databases.

Because we appreciate the universal quality of the first scenario and the high stakes of the second, we've released the latest Google Search Appliance, an enterprise search solution that can index all of an organization's content (up to 10 million documents) in a single box.

We think that searching for the myriad of business information that helps you do your job should be as easy as searching for information on Google.com -- regardless of how much content your organization has, or where it resides. And since the volume of documents, customer contacts, presentations and other data flowing into your office is probably not going to shrink any time soon, giving your IT organization access to a high-capacity single appliance (instead of the dozens that come with typical enterprise search implementations) might save your company expense and administrative hours while making it that much easier for you to find the exact piece of information you need to close that sales deal -- 10 million documents at a time.

As for finding your driver's license, you're on your own. Learn more about our search solutions for businesses.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Enterprise Search

15:58
利用数据与网络垃圾作斗争
» ‎ Google 黑板报 -- Google 中国的博客网志

Tags: [edit]

转载自谷歌中文网站管理员博客
发表者: Matt Cutts, 软件工程师

原文：Using data to fight webspam
发表于：2008年6月27日星期三下午4:51

这篇博客是讲述我们如何利用所收集的数据来改善我们的产品和服务的系列文章中的最新一篇。

作为谷歌反网络垃圾小组的负责人，我的职责是确保您得到的搜索结果尽可能的相关与翔实。也许您没有听说过网络垃圾，网络垃圾就是搜索结果中的垃圾结果，这些垃圾结果要么狡猾地骗取了搜索结果中较高的排名位置，要么违反了搜索引擎质量指南。如果您从来没有见过网络垃圾，下面是一个很好的例子：如果您在搜索结果中点击了这样一个垃圾链接，就可能会看到以下画面（点击可浏览大图）。

您可以看到，这是一个没有任何价值的网页。这个例子中的网页几乎没有任何原创内容，还充斥着大量无关链接以及对用户没有多大用处的信息。我们努力确保您不会看到这样的搜索结果。可以想象，如果您点击了一个谷歌搜索结果的链接却最终看到了这类网页会是多么的不愉快。

现在，搜索用户并不会经常在搜索结果中看到这样露骨的、纯粹的网络垃圾。但是，早在谷歌普及之前，在我们找到有效的反网络垃圾的方法之前，网络垃圾就已经是一个大问题了。一般而言，网络垃圾真的令人非常恼火，例如您搜索自己的名字，返回结果的链接却指向了色情网页。而对于许多非常注重获得相关性信息的搜索来说，网络垃圾成了一个严重的问题。例如，一个关于前列腺癌的搜索，获得的结果却充斥着网络垃圾而不是相关信息的链接，这会大大削弱搜索引擎作为一种有用工具的价值。

来自搜索日志的数据是我们用来与网络垃圾作斗争，力求返回更纯净、更相关的搜索结果的一种工具。IP地址和cookie信息等日志数据，使建立和使用指标系统、从不同方面衡量我们的搜索质量（例如索引的规模和覆盖范围、结果的"新鲜"程度，垃圾链接的数量等）成为可能。

每当我们创建新的衡量指标时，很重要的一点是能够审阅我们的日志数据，并利用先前的查询或搜索结果生成衡量网络垃圾的新的指标。我们使用搜索日志实现"时间回溯"，看看谷歌几个月来在用户查询方面改进了多少。当我们建立了一个新的指标能够更加精准地衡量一种新型的网络垃圾时，我们不仅可以跟踪今后我们阻击这种网络垃圾的进展情况，更可以使用日志数据分析我们在几个月前甚至几年前对同一类型网络垃圾的处理效果。

IP和cookie信息非常重要，它们能帮助我们把这种方法的应用范围仅限于"合法"的用户搜索，而不是那些由机器产生的搜索以及其他虚假搜索。举例来说，如果一个自动程序一遍又一遍地将相同的查询发送至谷歌，那么在我们衡量用户看到了多少网络垃圾之前，就应把这些搜索查询剔除出去。所有这一切——日志数据、IP地址和cookie信息——都会让您得到的搜索结果更纯净、更相关。

如果您认为网络垃圾已经不再成为一个问题了，请再仔细想想吧。去年，谷歌的索引体系遭遇了来自.cn顶级域名的网络垃圾的疯狂攻击。一些网络垃圾制造者大量购买廉价的.cn域名，并在这些网站上堆满故意拼错的词汇和色情词汇。资深的用户可能还记得曾经读过几篇与此相关的博客，但绝大多数普通用户甚至可能从来没有注意到这些。普通的搜索用户没有注意到这些异常搜索结果的原因，是因为谷歌及时识别出了这些.cn网络垃圾，并通过一个快速跟踪项目，很好地应对了此类网络垃圾的攻击。如果没有日志数据帮助我们识别问题发生的速度和范围，可能会有更多的谷歌用户受到此类攻击的影响。

理想的情况是，绝大多数用户甚至不需要知道谷歌有这样一个反网络垃圾小组。如果我们的工作做得很出色，您可能偶尔会看到质量不高的搜索结果，但您无需面对恶意的JavaScript重定向、令人反感的色情内容、充斥着无意义内容的页面或其他类型的网络垃圾。我们的日志数据有助于确保我们追踪到网络垃圾的新动向，并且在它们影响您的搜索体验之前采取相应的行动。

13:21
Google has Olympic fever
» ‎ Googling Google

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Since Google is spending a lot of time and money making sure they are the number one search engine in every country, or at least trying to, it’s no surprise that Google has been looking at the Olympics as a huge opportunity that can’t be missed. According to the IOC (Internation Olympic Committee), they will be [...]

13:00
Making Time to Make: The Job You Think You Have
» ‎ 43 Folders

Tags: [edit]

This article is Part 2 from a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work called, Making Time to Make.
Previously: Part 1, Bad Correspondence
Next: Part 3, A Clear Line

If you’re a publisher, journalist, author, blogger, musician, artist, designer, cartoonist, or any other sort of person whose job it is to connect with people by communicating ideas, it’s natural and wholesome for people who are interested in what you do (and many of whom are certainly makers-of-stuff in their own right) to develop a relationship with your work and to want a way to participate in it, add to it, and build upon it. It’s equally great to reciprocate in a way that’s collaborative, fun, and useful. God knows, it’s anybody’s dream to have people interested enough in what you do to find that they want to reach out to you. Talk about a first-world problem.

But, it can still be a big challenge, and in my estimation, it’s a multi-faceted problem that involves scale, resource constraint, and old-fashioned scarcity. It’s a disparity that confronts anyone who tries to exhaustively participate in every request for his or her attention with equally unrestrained brio — especially if you ever hope to make the time to do strong, creative work constituting anything but perfunctory meta-communication.

Thing is: if the amount of time you devote to lite correspondence with individual people exceeds the amount of time you spend on making things, then you may be in a different line of work than you’d originally thought you were. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if you’re feeling off your game, it might be a good time to ask yourself whether you’re primarily a writer of novels or of email messages. Do you generate more IMs than comic panels? Have you drafted more web comments than scenes in your screenplay? Or, for that matter, do you find you’re taking more meetings than photos these days?

What is it that you really do? What’s the last thing you made that really excited you? Where are you and your work in all that “communication?”
The Connected Maker
The notion of the lone scribe, isolated in his garret and toiling away at an illuminated text, is an image that’s as cliche as it is romantic. In fact, it’s a hilariously quaint idea for those artists and makers who use social media and online communities to create, distribute, and expand upon their work.

You could even argue (and I’d happen to agree) that talented people like Jonathan Coulton, Ze Frank, and The Ninja have fashioned an enviable career largely out of making something delightful and by actively participating in projects that folks who’ve enjoyed their work are driving. Clearly, this is an emerging model for anyone who wants to take their act online, and it’s generally great and very enjoyable for everyone involved. Except.

What happens at the theoretical point where Jonathan has to respond to so much personal email that it starts cutting into his songwriting time? Or, what if Ze were compelled to stop using forums and embedded video to communicate en masse, forced instead to conduct all his projects via one-on-one video IM sessions? And what about The Ninja? Well, imagine if, instead of appearing in a wildly-popular podcast, he were suddenly expected to visit every viewer’s home to personally threaten to kill them. That’s a lot of traveling. Even for a deadly ninja.
Nowhere, Man
In each instance, the dedicated attention might be fabulous for the individual who demands and receives the modern equivalent of face time. And, for a while anyway, it’d probably be a lot of fun for the makers to do. But, is this a sane, scalable, and sustainable way to do your work? I’d say no. No, it is not.

The power of connecting with people in an authentic way (no, not in that cheesy, half-assed, internet “friends” way) falls apart at the point where its resource consumption curtails your ability to keep making new stuff. It’s a twisted paradox, for sure. But, in essence, it’d be a little like the Beatles skipping the writing and recording of Rubber Soul in order to catch up on 1964’s fan mail.

Put plainer, my sense is that western culture would be a damn sight poorer today if John Lennon had been forced to carry a goddamn BlackBerry.

This article is Part 2 from a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work called, Making Time to Make.
Previously: Part 1, Bad Correspondence
Next: Part 3, A Clear Line

8:05
Seeing New Orleans through Street View
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]

Louisiana is a place with heart and soul, a place where culture lives in the streets, in the rhythm of our music and in the flavors of our unique cuisine. I recently had the opportunity to visit the Googleplex and I expressed my interest in seeing Street View come to Louisiana, so I'm excited to see the launch of Street View imagery for Greater New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport. This remarkable tool allows us to share with the world life as we see it, here on the ground in my home state.

In this time of recovery and rebuilding, it is important that we share real images of life in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast. As you explore the streets of New Orleans, you will discover a city marked by extremes. You will see some areas spared the worst of Katrina’s fury which have quickly recovered, and you will find other neighborhoods that remain flattened by the floodwaters that broke the levees. You will see that our residents call both FEMA trailers and antebellum mansions home.

What you might not see is the incredible spirit of those who have given themselves to this city. Those who were lost in the storm, and those who survived and have returned. The thousands who are still searching for a place to call home. The more than one million volunteers who have come from across the nation and the world to give their time, their sweat, and their hearts to rebuilding a great American city.

But rebuilding gives us another opportunity – one unprecedented in our lifetimes. Because we are starting from scratch in many cases, we can build back better than before. We can create new solutions to persistent social problems – solutions that can be put to the test in New Orleans. Whether we’re talking about designing new levees to hold back flood waters, schools to prepare our kids for a 21st century economy, or a justice system to keep our citizens safe, Louisiana is addressing all of these issues and more. We can find the answers for our nation’s ills on the streets of this city.

Street View for New Orleans will help you get to know the city, its streets and its neighborhoods in a way never before possible. And when you are ready to discover more, I invite you to come see and experience the streets, the soul and the spirit of New Orleans for yourself.

Posted by Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu, State of Louisiana

1:14
Enough with the USB-key swag already!
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

It seems that every conference I go to some company thinks it hip to use USB keys for swag. I’m sure it was hip. In 2001. Now it’s just such a waste.

Especially because the keys usually aren’t even a remotely useful size. If you’re going to splurge the marketing budget on a swag key, then 256MB is just not going to cut it.

I’d rather have a squeeze ball or a yoyo!

0:31
Making Time to Make: Bad Correspondence
» ‎ 43 Folders

Tags: [edit]

This article is Part 1 from a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work called, Making Time to Make.
Next: Part 2, The Job You Think You Have

Over the years, novelist Neal Stephenson (wiki), has had at least a couple different pages where he’s explained why he’s chosen to limit the access he provides via email, interviews, and phone calls. It appears to be something he’s given a lot of thought to.

Via Jessamyn, here’s an Archive.org mirror of an older version of his page where he explains his introversion and need to stay focused on his work, alongside FAQs that answer many of the questions he typically has to field. Read it all though. It’s pretty good. Stephenson’s bottom line?

I simply cannot respond to all incoming stimuli unless I retire from writing novels. And I don’t wish to retire at this time.

And here’s another well known piece, Stephenson’s “Why I am a Bad Correspondent”, in which he lays out more details about why he’s chosen to create an expectation based on guarding his attention so slavishly:

Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.

He closes with a practical summation of why he’s made the decisions he has:

I am not proud of the fact that some of my e-mail goes unanswered as a result. It is never my intention to be rude or to give well-meaning readers the cold shoulder. If I were a commercial best-seller, I would have enough money to hire a staff to look after my correspondence. As it is, my books are bought by enough people to provide me with a sort of middle-class lifestyle, but not enough to hire employees, and so I am faced with a stark choice between being a bad correspondent and being a good novelist. I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent.

As I read all this, I hear a man saying (at least in my words), “I can either be a guy who writes novels, or I can be a guy who answers email. Realizing I cannot be both, I’ve made the decision, and now I live with it.”

Like it or hate it, Neal Stephenson’s position is clear and well-articulated. If a bit pitched, it’s a stance I admire, and frankly I think it’s an only slightly more extreme version of a position every maker needs to define if he or she expects to create the time to keep making anything.

This article is Part 1 from a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work called, Making Time to Make.
Next: Part 2, The Job You Think You Have

August 04, 2008
23:44
Chicago Thunderstorm
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

We had a pretty wicked line of thunderstorms roll through Chicago last night. I propped my Flip video camera up on the windowsill to capture the hot lightning action. It gets worse as time goes on. Close strike around 3:58.
23:05
Product Blog update: Wedding planning (Backpack), tracking miles (Basecamp), Getting Real one of the 77 best business books, etc.
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
Keeping track of miles with Basecamp time tracking
“What we are doing now is using a project folder called mileage log and instead of recording time, we record miles. As a manager, it is easier for me to generate reports per person and date range and attach those to the accounting department for reimbursement purposes.”

Basecamp helps barn converters
“For me, the cornerstone of project management isn’t a gantt chart or a risk register, but lists. In Basecamp, I find the ability to create and maintain all the lists that I need to keep track of my barn conversion. It also provides you with the ability to share files, text, and messages and track time & tasks with other members of a project team. The emphasis is on project collaboration and communication.”

Backpack
Two examples of using Backpack to plan a wedding
“Our wedding was an informal affair at a beach-side kiosk location in South Australia. To co-ordinate people involved in the event, friends and family mostly, we used this Backpack public page. It worked wonderfully well and the day was a huge success.”

Campfire
Macworld chooses Campfire and Backpack as tools for “portable office”
“Keeping things unstructured and unscheduled leaves room for us to chat about anything—from what we did over the weekend, to specific issues that crop up while we work. Since our East Coast writer starts earlier than everyone else, we West Coasters catch his posts in Campfire after we wake up and log on. More than any other Web application on this list, Campfire offers a strong sense of working in the same space with your team, even if you’re physically spread out across the country.”

Getting Real
PMBA: Getting Real is one of the 77 best business books in print
The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List is a list of “the 77 best business books in print.” We’re pleased to announce that Getting Real by 37signals is now on the list! It is one of six books in the “Design & Production” category.

How GitHub used Getting Real to pick a fight, scratch their own itch, and stay lean
“We’ve employed Getting Real (with great success) at GitHub since day one. Not because we wanted to, or because we thought it was the One True Way. We’ve done it because we had no choice…Once we eschewed funding, we made a few more decisions: stay lean, give the site an attitude, bust out features quickly, and define the site’s purpose in a single sentence.”

Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

20:42
在谷歌整合搜索中一次到位的查询歌曲内容
» ‎ Google 黑板报 -- Google 中国的博客网志

Tags: [edit]

发表者：谷歌中国公关部崔瑾

登录谷歌首页，在整合搜索中可以一次到位的查询音乐内容。今天，我们在中国针对中国用户推出了音乐搜索的实验版。这个搜索功能首先选择在谷歌网页搜索——整合搜索——中展开。

目前这个测试版本中，囊括了上百家唱片公司的数万首中文歌曲。但是，这个实验版只是谷歌在音乐搜索上的开端，我们还有太多东西要做。但是，这个起点解决了一个根本的难题：针对用户的免费和保证音乐的合法：对于互联网用户，合法音乐只是逻辑的起点，并非终结。但是，唯有合法、共赢才能从根本上避免死链、病毒、下载速度慢和音乐质量差等用户体验上的困境，才能真正实现更多音乐搜索功能的创新。互联网遇见收费就会消化不良，很庆幸，我们在对用户免费、对歌者回报、对版权尊重的要求间找到了一个平衡。

另外一个歪打正着的成果就是，恐怕连开复也没有想到，只给用户一个而不是一百万个结果的目标居然是在这个测试版里面先实现！这个绝对是意外之喜！:)

谷歌的音乐搜索刚刚启航，今天只是一个实验的地点，我们想做的、没做的还有太多，期待这个合作模式能够为互联网产业与传统音乐产业的深度合作创造一个新的机遇、打开一扇大门，期待那些有创意、有梦想的音乐人能够创造更多好的内容，唯有如此，音乐搜索才有真正的生存之本。
18:31
用谷歌来搜音乐
» ‎ Google 黑板报 -- Google 中国的博客网志

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发表者：谷歌中国产品经理洪锋

用谷歌来搜音乐？为什么不呢？

早已记不清有多少次，有多少位网友曾对我说：音乐，我们要听音乐，下音乐，我们要用谷歌来搜音乐！

用户，只有用户才是推动网络科技进步的源动力。当他们高声呼喊“我们需要音乐”的时候，我们，谷歌，难道不该做些什么吗？

经过很长时间的努力，我们今天和合作伙伴巨鲸音乐网开始了整合搜索中的音乐功能的尝试。当你在谷歌搜索歌手、专辑或歌曲的时候，你会在搜索结果顶部找到歌手照片、专辑封面等音乐信息，你可以通过链接到巨鲸音乐网试听或下载高质量的正版音乐，不需要安装任何软件，也不需要在重复的链接中选择或担心垃圾链接的存在……

这是一种新的音乐服务运作模式的实验，用户无需为正版音乐付费。在线音乐广告分成的模式让我们找到了一个提升用户体验、尊重歌手创作、尊重版权之间的平衡。这个尝试才刚刚开始，我们在不断工作，添加更多功能并提升正版音乐的覆盖率。
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让我们一起试用和改进产品，请在这里给我们提出您的建议！

5:33
37signals Live debuting tomorrow at 3pm CDT
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

Over the years we’ve received hundreds (thousands?) of emails asking us our opinion on this, how we’d do that, what we think of this idea or that idea. People ask about Getting Real, entrepreneurship, business models, hiring, collaboration, design decisions, tech-related stuff, questions about our products, etc.

We also really enjoy the Q&A sessions at the end of our talks whenever we present at a conference or workshop. We always try to leave ample time to answer as many questions as we can. We’ve always believed live Q&A is the best part of any talk (and unfortunately there never seems to be enough time left over at the end to get to everyone’s questions).

So we’ve been thinking: How can we make Q&A more a part of our business? We enjoy it, people seem to get a lot of value from it, so we should do it more often.

We could certainly write more “Ask 37signals” blog entries, but it’s hard to find the time to write ‘em all up. We also seem to give better answers when we talk them through rather than when we write them down.

So we’ve decided to take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuck’s book and do a 37signals Live Q&A session on the web. We don’t know how well it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a shot.

The first session will be tomorrow August 5th at 3pm CDT (what’s that in my time zone?). We’ll plan for an hour but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have a live video feed and people can ask us questions via a live text chat that’ll run alongside the video.

We’re excited to see what happens. If it works out we’d love to do them on a regular basis. If not, we’ll chalk it up to experience.

So, ask us anything tomorrow at 3! We’ll see you there!
5:33
37signals Live debuting tomorrow (Tues) at 3pm CDT
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

Over the years we’ve received hundreds (thousands?) of emails asking us our opinion on this, how we’d do that, what we think of this idea or that idea. People ask about Getting Real, entrepreneurship, business models, hiring, collaboration, design decisions, tech-related stuff, questions about our products, etc.

We also really enjoy the Q&A sessions at the end of our talks whenever we present at a conference or workshop. We always try to leave ample time to answer as many questions as we can. We’ve always believed live Q&A is the best part of any talk (and unfortunately there never seems to be enough time left over at the end to get to everyone’s questions).

So we’ve been thinking: How can we make Q&A more a part of our business? We enjoy it, people seem to get a lot of value from it, so we should do it more often.

We could certainly write more “Ask 37signals” blog entries, but it’s hard to find the time to write ‘em all up. We also seem to give better answers when we talk them through rather than when we write them down.

So we’ve decided to take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuck’s book and do a 37signals Live Q&A session on the web. We don’t know how well it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a shot.

The first session will be tomorrow (August 5th) at 3pm CDT (what’s that in my time zone?). We’ll plan for an hour but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have a live video feed and people can ask us questions via a live text chat that’ll run alongside the video.

We’re excited to see what happens. If it works out we’d love to do them on a regular basis. If not, we’ll chalk it up to experience.

So, ask us anything tomorrow at 3! We’ll see you there!

2:05
Google about to launch new Translation service
» ‎ Googling Google

Tags: [edit]

It appears that Google has been working hard on a new human translation service that will hopefully make it easy for people to request translations of a document from a human. The new service, called Google Translation Center (the link still doesn’t work), appears to be volunteer based, but it would make sense for [...]

August 03, 2008
22:20
Big business learning that smaller teams can rekindle the creative spark
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

Tags: [edit]

Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small [NY Times] talks about how smaller teams are more agile and creative. The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams.

By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, “small is the new big,” as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.

It is a point of view shared by a diverse group of business leaders, management consultants and information technology experts. According to Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created and operates the virtual world of Second Life, companies seeking to foster creativity must find ways to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchies now smothering it. Optimizing a company for creativity involves helping individual employees of every rank develop an entrepreneurial spirit. In Mr. Rosedale’s view, the most creative work environment is one where every employee, regardless of job title, has enough freedom to develop that sense of personal initiative.

“Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors,” he contends. “The business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.”

Decentralizing the hierarchy opens the door to creativity, giving workers the leeway they need to make significant decisions without first jumping through executive management hoops. “The idea,” he says, “is to enable a creative environment where there’s a good degree of experimentation.”

Optimizing a company for creativity also optimizes it for small-group collaboration. And that opens the door to new information technology that lets team members work cooperatively from anywhere on the planet. “That’s the revolution that’s making all of this possible,” Mr. Rosedale says.

It’s great to see these ideas picking up steam and getting out there in the mainstream press.

19:04
浪潮之巅第十章短暂的春秋——与机会失之交臂的公司（四）
» ‎ Google 黑板报 -- Google 中国的博客网志

Tags: [edit]

发表者：Google（谷歌）研究员吴军

第一节太阳公司

1．1 昔日的辉煌

 1．2 错失良机

 1．3 历史的回放

第二节 Novell 公司

今天的年轻人可能很多都没有听说过 Novell 公司，但是它曾经和太阳公司一样，一度有希望在操作系统方面和微软抗衡，但是终因时运不济，败在了微软手下。

2．1 局域网的微软

要谈 Novell 公司，不可避免地要先介绍 3COM 公司。

在微机出现的前几年，用户大多是对立用户——彼此的计算机互不通消息。个人微机只不过是为了满足个人娱乐（比如游戏）、学习、文字处理、日常管理和简单的工业控制等需求。在商业企业中（比如银行）使用的联网的计算机系统几乎无一例外是由中央主机（Main Frame）加外围终端构成——所有计算都是由中央主机完成，而外围终端不过是输入和显示设备。中央主机采用分时的操作系统，同时为众多终端用户服务。在八十年代初期以前，没有人打算用微机取代大型计算机系统。

但是，就在 1979 年，发生了一件当时没有引起人们关注，但对今后计算机发展有深远影响的事。那一年，施乐公司举世闻名的帕洛阿图实验室（Xerox PARC）的几个发明了以太网（Ethernet）的科学家创办了 3Com 公司，开发出以太网的适配器（Adaptor），俗称网卡。虽然 3COM 最早是为 IBM 和 DEC 等公司的大小型中央主机设计网络适配器，但是，随着微机的普及，3COM 公司很快就将生意扩展到主机领域。

到了八十年代中期，IBM-PC/AT 及其兼容的个人微机在很多任务中已经能取代原有 DEC PDP 和 VAX 等小型机的地位，而且微机的性价比比小型机高一个数量级以上。如果能将微机联网，共享数据和硬件资源，它们就可以取代小型机系统。遗憾的是，微机最初设计时根本没有考虑资源共享，网络功能是零。3COM 公司的以太网服务器和适配器弥补了微机的这个不足，解决了微机的联网问题。以前的 VAX 或者 HP 小型机系统基本上是下图的架构：
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资源和数据是集中管理，所有的计算、存储和打印由小型机完成。它的好处是信息是共享的，但是成本非常高，对于一个几十人的小型企业，基本上用不起 VAX 小型机加终端的计算机系统。我记得在八十年代中期，一个 20～40 个用户的 VAX 系统需要花费近二百万人民币。除了硬件的投入，小型机系统还需要专门的机房和管理人员，这些管理人员必须经过硬件公司的培训。虽然小型机速度不慢，但是它的计算速度摊到每个用户上并不快。小型机是整个系统的中心，如果它出现了任何问题，这个系统都无法工作。微机联网后，在很多时候可以代替小型机，它的架构是这样的：
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在这样一个被称为微机局域网（PC LAN）的系统中，有一台网络服务器，它通常是一台高性能的微机，当然也可以是小型机和工作站，它主要是用来管理网络和存储共享的数据并为微机之间交换数据作为桥梁。计算基本上是在微机上完成，部分不愿意共享的文件也可以保存在本地微机上。由于每台微机有自己的独立性，网络服务器即使出了问题，微机也可以单机工作。虽然每台微机不如小型机快，但几十台微机的总计算能力超过小型机。而且，能够完成同样功能的系统，微机局域网相比之下要便宜得多，在八十年代中期，这样一个 40 台微机的系统硬件投入只有六七十万人民币。而且，微机系统不需要专门的管理员，运营成本也低。总的来讲这种基于微机局域网的计算机系统相比小型机来说，在大多数应用中优点多于缺点。所以，从八十年代中期起，微机局域网代替小型机系统成为不可逆转的趋势。（这也是 DEC 公司后来关门的原因。）

3COM 公司虽然搞出了微机局域网，但是该公司目标不明确，它从网络适配器、网络服务器到网络操作系统都做。这也许是因为它创立于八十年代初，那时 IT 行业最挣钱的还是硬件，所以 3COM 公司实际是以硬件为主，软件为辅。即使当它在网络上失败以后，它仍然习惯性地以硬件为主，买下了生产掌上个人助理系统 Palm Pilot 的母公司 US Robotics。由于以太网的标准是公开的，它的适配器没有什么难做的，谁都可以做。而以太网的网络服务器实际上就是一个高端 PC，任何 PC 厂商都可以做，因此，在 3COM 公司出现后，各种兼容的网卡和网络服务器就出现了，这个时候微机局域网市场像微机市场一样混乱而且竞争激烈。其实，微机局域网中最关键的技术是网络操作系统。在这方面也需要一个类似微软的公司来统一它，Novell 公司便应运而生了。

Novell 公司也是诞生于 1979 年。但是它成为网络公司并且改名为 Novell 是 1983 年的事，这时，3COM 已经是局域网方面的大哥大了。Novell 公司进入网络领域后目标一直很明确——专攻操作系统。如果说 3COM 在微机局域网领域的地位有点像苹果在微机领域中的地位，那么可以把Novell 对应于微软。

Novell 公司搞了一个叫 NOS（Network Operating System）的操作系统，对应于微软的 DOS。它采用和微软 MSDOS 同源的 DRDOS，因此它的网络操作系统实际上可以完全独立于微软的软件运行，同时又和微软的 DOS 兼容。虽然 Novell 后来买了一家网卡公司也做点硬件，但是它的精力一直放在网络操作系统上。随着 Novell 的网络操作系统在微机局域网上越来越流行，它处在了一个和微软同样的有利位置：不管用户使用哪一个牌子的 PC 和网络硬件，都可以使用 Novell 的操作系统。Novell 网络操作系统不仅自己安装十分容易，而且建立一个局域网的工程也简单到非专业人员看看说明书也可以做。一个没学过计算机的人看着别人干两次就会了。读者如果曾在九十年代初在中关村转过一两圈，就能记起当时任何一家两三人的小公司都会在自己的业务上写上“网络安装”等字样。很快，Novell 的操作系统在局域网上就像 DOS 在微机上一样普及。从八十年代到九十年代初期，Novell 公司成长得一番风顺，不仅很快超过了 3COM 公司，到 1990 年，它几乎垄断了整个微机局域网操作系统的市场，营业额接近微软（九亿美元对微软的十一亿美元）。因为微机联网已经成为了一种趋势，而且微机的局域网比基于Unix服务器、工作站和 TCP/IP 协议的网络在中小企业中更有前途，Novell 公司很有可能成为另一个微软——它可能垄断企业级的操作系统。在接下来的五年中，Novell 仍然靠着浪潮的惯性，以每年 20% 的速度增长到 1995 年。那一年 Novell 的营业额超过二十亿美元，相当于微软同年 40% 的水平。现在回过头来看，Novell 这五年的业务虽然不断增长，但是，它的进步还是远远落后于微软。

2.2 操作系统之败

显然，微软不可能看着 Novell 做大，但是，直到 1994 年以前，它们的竞争并不引人注意。由于微软当时的核心业务还是以个人微机的操作系统和办公软件为主，它和 Novell 的业务不是太重合，它们之间的共同利益甚至大于它们的矛盾。在当时，一个企业在安装网络时有两个主要选择，基于各个版本的 UNIX 和 TCP/IP 协议的局域网，或者基于 Novell 的 NOS 的局域网。前者在用户看来是 UNIX，后者是 DOS。虽然 Novell 采用的是 DRDOS，但是用户使用起来和微软的 MSDOS 一模一样，对程序开发者来讲也是一样。Novell 无疑是在帮助微软和 UNIX 争夺企业级的市场。当时，微软在网络操作系统上毫无可圈点之处，它甚至临时性地选择了 IBM 的 OS/2 LAN Server 来抵消 Novell 在网络上的优势，但是 OS/2 LAN Server 从来就没有成为过一种主流的网络操作系统。

1993 年和 1994 年，正如日中天的 Novell 进行了两次对公司业务颇有影响的并购。第一次是从 AT&T 购买了 UNIX 的版权，显示 Novell 进军 UNIX 企业市场的决心，从那以后直到今天， Novell 的网络操作系统有了服务于 UNIX 工作站的版本。但是，Novell 没有直接推 UNIX，说明 Novell 的技术路线方向明确，并没有像一些失败的公司那样左右摇摆；第二件事是收购被微软打垮的字处理软件 Word Perfect，和 Borland 公司的一个制表软件，表明了 Novell 进军办公软件市场的决心。后一次收购后来一直有争议，很多人认为 Novell 不务正业（网络操作系统），胡乱扩张，导致它在网络操作系统上失去了对微软的优势。我个人倒觉得 Novell 的做法并没有大错。当年，Novell 在微机局域网操作系统市场上已经占了百分之七十几的份额，按照诺威格宿命的讲法，无法再让市场占有率翻番了，必须开拓新的成长点。从企业级操作系统进入企业级办公软件是一件很自然的事。事实上，微软的 Office 办公软件从企业中挣的钱一直比从个人身上挣的钱多，这证明 Novell 的切入点是对的。今天的 Google 也是由在线服务进而进入在线办公软件市场。只是，当微软有了字处理软件 Words 和制表软件 Excel 以后，市场上很难再容纳第二家办公软件。不仅是 Novell，太阳公司和IBM都试图进入企业的办公软件市场，但都被微软挡在了门外。

从 1995 年起，微软和 Novell 之争起了质的变化。微软一年前推出的 Windows NT 对 Novell 的影响开始显现出来了。用户已经从 DOS 转向了 Windows，Novell 的操作系统对微软的 Windows NT 几乎没有优势可言。很难想象一个局域网在其网络服务器上安装 Novell 的操作系统，同时在联网的微机上使用 Windows 。显然从服务器到微机一律采用微软的 Windows 是更好的办法，这时胜利的天平开始向微软倾斜，并成为不可逆转的趋势。

1995 年以后，Novell 仍然不断在提升自己的产品，并且在技术上做得很好。它的网络操作系统支持所有主要的计算机（运行 Windows 的 PC、UNIX 工作站和苹果的 PC 以及 IBM 的大型机），为采用多个厂家计算机的复杂的网络系统提供了高性能的统一的平台。Novell 的操作系统既可以用专用服务器，也可以用任何一种PC机作为服务器，而且它支持无盘工作站（和微机），适合经费不宽裕的学校的教学实验室和小企业。但是这些特色都无法抵消微软在微机操作系统上的优势。事实上，没有多少企业需要将五花八门的计算机连起来，因为大部分企业在建立自己网络时都会有一个规划。无盘工作站随着硬件价钱的降低变得越来越没有人要。微软只是老老实实地将微机联好，这就解决了百分之八九十的问题，微软吃住了这百分之八九十的市场就能统治企业级网络操作系统了。

与其它和微软竞争的失败者相比，Novell 在和微软的竞争中几乎没有犯错误。如果说它有什么不足的话，可能在执行力上比盖茨领导的微软有所欠缺。但是，胜利者只能有一个，只要微软垄断微机操作系统，Novell 在操作系统上输给微软便是注定了的。Novell 无疑知道微软的垄断是阻碍它发展的根本原因，因此在 2000 年美国司法部对微软反垄断的官司中，它是最重要的证人。 2000 年初审判决决定将微软一拆为二，Novell 原本可以喘口气，但是，2001 布什上台后为微软翻了案，Novell 从此掉进了永无天日的深渊。虽然后来 Novell 把 Linux 介绍给了它 NetWare 的用户，并把 NetWare 与 Linux 结合起来，总算活了下来，但是已经在网络市场上降到二流的地位。NetWare 从企业的视野中消失，只是时间的问题。

August 01, 2008
7:32
Follow 37signals on Twitter
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

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We’re going to start using Twitter a lot more to announce news, new features, special offers, live Q&A sessions, events, and more. If you want to be one of the first ones to know, make sure to follow us on Twitter!

2:20
Search quality, continued
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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A few weeks back Udi Manber introduced the search quality group, and the previous posts in this series talked about the ranking of documents. While the ranking of web documents forms the core of what makes search at Google work so well, your search experience consists of much more than that. In this post, I'll describe the principles that guide our development of the overall search experience and how they are applied to the key aspects of search. I will also describe how we make sure we are on the right track through rigorous experimentation. And the next post in this series will describe some of the experiments currently underway.

Let me introduce myself. I'm Ben Gomes, and I've been working on search at Google since 1999, mostly on search quality. I've had the good fortune to contribute to most aspects of the search engine, from crawling the web to ranking. More recently, I've been responsible for the engineering of the interface for search and search features.

A common reaction from friends when I say that I now work on Google's search user interface is "What do you do? It never changes." Then they look at me suspiciously and tell me not to mess with a good thing. Google is fine just the way it is -- a plain, fast, simple web page. That's great, but how hard can that be?"

To help answer that question, let me start with our main goal in web search: to get you to the web pages you want as quickly as possible. Search is not an end in itself; it is merely a conduit. This goal may seem obvious, but it makes a search engine radically different from most other sites on the web, which measure their success by how long their users stay. We measure our web search success partly by how quickly you leave (happily, we hope!). There are several principles we use in getting you to the information you need as quickly as possible:
- A small page. A small page is quick to download and generally faster for your browser to display. This results in a minimalist design aesthetic; extra fanciness in the interface slows down the page without giving you much benefit.
- Complex algorithms with a simple presentation. Many search features require a great deal of algorithmic complexity and a vast amount of data analysis to make them work well. The trick is to hide all that complexity behind a clean, intuitive user interface. Spelling correction, snippets, sitelinks and query refinements are examples of features that require sophisticated algorithms and are constantly improving. From the user's point of view search, almost invisibly, just works better.
- Features that work everywhere. Features must be designed such that the algorithms and presentation can be adapted to work in all languages and countries. Consider the problem of spell correction in Chinese, where user queries are often not broken up into words or Hebrew/Arabic, where text is written right to left (interestingly, this is believed to be an example of first-mover disadvantage -- when chiseling on stone, it is easier to hold the hammer in your right hand!).
- Data driven decisions - experiment, experiment, experiment. We try to verify that we've done the right thing by running experiments. Designs that may seem promising may end up testing poorly.
There are inherent tensions here. For instance, showing you more text (or images) for every result may enable you to better pick out the best result. But a result page that has too much information takes longer to download and longer to visually process. So every piece of information that we add to the result page has to be carefully considered to ensure that the benefit to the user outweighs the cost of dealing with that additional information. This is true of every part of the search experience, from typing in a query, to scanning results, to further exploration.

The start of your search is typing in a query. A common cause of frustration is if you don't know the correct spelling of a word! Spell correction -- which seems like a simple and obvious feature -- hides many technical challenges. No common English dictionaries would ever include the correct spelling of Britney Spears, for instance (who, probably completely unbeknownst to her, has become the poster child example for this feature). We do a huge amount of analysis of the billions of pages on the web and our query logs to determine what are "real words" on the web, and what are likely to be misspellings. The system that gives you the spell correction has to, in a fraction of a second, consider a huge number of possible words you might have meant (vastly greater than any dictionary ever manually constructed) and determine if there is a more likely query you meant to type. When we are confident that you actually meant to type something else, we take a rare liberty with our search results: we try to distract you from looking at the top result on the page. The spelling correction is in your line of sight and colored a bright must-see red. Furthermore, we now make sure that nothing else on the page is red, unless it is as important to you as spelling! (so far, nothing is). The algorithms involved in spell correction are constantly getting better. They now work in a large number of languages and are even better at detecting when you have made a spelling mistake. Getting the spelling of your query right is so important that we are considering showing you the results of the spell-corrected query in the middle of the page (just in case you missed our bright red text at the top and bottom!).

Having formulated your query correctly, the next task is to pick a page from the result list. For each result, we present the title and url, and a brief two line snippet. Pages that don't have a proper title are often ignored by users. One of the bigger recent changes has been to extract titles for pages that don't specify an HTML title -- yet a title on the page is clearly right there, staring at you. To "see" that title that the author of the page intended, we analyze the HTML of the page to determine the title that the author probably meant. This makes it far more likely that you will not ignore a page for want of a good title. Below the title comes the snippet, and a key early innovation was in what Google showed for the snippet. At the time, search engines showed you the first two lines of the web page; Google, instead, showed you parts of the page where your actual search keywords showed up (information retrieval experts call this "keywords-in-context"). Showing keywords-in-context is visually simple and virtually indistinguishable from the simpler style of snippets, but vastly more useful in helping you decide which page to visit. This simplicity belies underlying complexity: when we create a snippet we have to go through the actual text from each result to find the most relevant part (which contain your keywords) rather than just giving you the first few lines.

We have been making improvements to our snippets over time with algorithms for determining the relevance of portions of the page. The changes range from the subtle -- we highlight synonyms of your query terms in the results -- to more obvious. Here's an example screenshot where the user searched for "arod" and you can see that Alex and Rodriguez are bolded in the search result snippet, based on our analysis that you might plausibly be referring to him:

As a more obvious example, we now extract and show you the byline date from pages that have one. These byline dates are expressed in a myriad formats which we extract and present uniformly, so that you can scan them easily:

For one of the most common types of user needs, navigational queries -- where you type in the name of a web site you know -- we have introduced shortcuts (we refer to them as sitelinks). These sitelinks allow you to get to the key parts of the site and illustrate many of the same principles alluded to above; they are a simple addition to the top search result that adds a small amount of extra text to the page.

For instance, the home page of Hewlett-Packard has almost 60 links, in a two-level menu system. Our algorithms, using a combination of different signals, pick the top ones among these that we think you are most likely to want to visit.

What if you did not find what you were looking for among the top results? In that case, you probably need to try another query. We help you in this process by providing a set of query refinements at the bottom of the results page -- even if they don't give you the query that you need, they provide hints for different (likely more successful) directions in which you could refine your query. By placing the query refinements at the bottom of the page, the refinements don't distract users, but are there to help if the rest of the search results didn't serve a user's information need.

I've described several key aspects of the search experience, including where we have made many changes over time -- some subtle, some more obvious. In making these changes to the search experience, how do we know we've succeeded, that we've not messed it up? We constantly evaluate our changes by sharing them with you! We launch proposed changes to a tiny fraction of our users and evaluate whether it seems to be helping or hurting their search experience. There are many metrics we use to determine if we've succeeded or failed. The process of measuring these improvements is a science in itself, with many potential pitfalls. Our experimental methodology allows us to explore a range of possibilities and launch the ones that work the best. For every feature that we launch, we have frequently run a large number of experiments that did not see the light of day.

So let me answer the question I started with: We're actually constantly changing Google's result page and have been doing so for a long time. And no, we won't mess with a good thing. You won't let us.

In the next post in this series, I'll talk about some of the experiments we are running, and what we hope to learn from them.

Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

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