A new chairman: Dr. Eric E. Schmidt joins Google's
board
A new face can now be seen in the halls of the Googleplex. Dr. Eric E.
Schmidt, 45, currently chairman and CEO of Novell, Inc., has joined
Google's board of directors as chairman. Schmidt succeeds Sergey Brin,
Google's founding chairman and current president. Schmidt's appointment
is effective immediately and he has already been noted taking in the
rays on Google's café patio debating the merits of wireless networking
with staff engineers.
"Eric is widely acknowledged as a brilliant technologist and savvy
business leader," said Larry Page, Google's co-founder and CEO. "These
qualities, combined with his entrepreneurial spirit and fit with
Google's culture, make Eric the perfect addition to our board of
directors."
"Eric has a proven record in understanding and developing the promise
of great technologies," said Brin. "His extensive experience will be of
incomparable value to our board as we define the company's plan for
growth. We welcome Eric's leadership as chairman of Google's board."
Schmidt also is chairman of Novell subsidiary Volera, Inc., and serves
on the boards of Siebel Systems, Integrated Archive Systems, and Tilion.
Prior to his appointment at Novell, Schmidt was chief technology
officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He
was also a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and held positions at Bell
Laboratories and Zilog. Schmidt has a B.S. in electrical engineering
from Princeton University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science
from the University of California-Berkeley. He has begun learning to
play roller hockey.
Making Google available in every known language
Not content with the slow process of translating our Google interface
one language at a time into the innumerable tongues spoken around the
world, Google has implemented a translation console that allows our
users to help speed the process. Now any Googler can volunteer to
translate part or all of our pages into any one of more than 100
different languages. Already, volunteers have converted Google into
Catalan, Afrikaans, Russian and Czech, with more languages being added
on a weekly basis.
To see what languages are already available, visit the preferences page
at http://www.google.com/preferences.
To become a volunteer translator for your favorite language, visit:
http://services.google.com/tc/Welcome.html
New from Google: PhoneBook and PDF searching
Tried to find an address or phone number for a friend in another town
lately? It can be a fairly laborious process. Google helps out with a
new PhoneBook offering that's incorporated right into our main search
service. To try it out, just enter a name (first and last) and a zip
code or city. If the information is publicly listed, you'll find it
right at the top of your results.
Lots of valuable information on the web is not presented
as HTML web pages, but as PDF files. These pages are snapshots
of text and/or graphics documents and are viewed through
special readers like Adobe Acrobat (available as a free
download). Google now searches these Graphic files and makes
them available to you within your search results. Each PDF
file is labeled with a blue <PDF> at the beginning
of the results listing. Clicking on one of these results
will automatically launch a PDF viewer if it's on your computer
or direct you to a site from which you can download one.
Or you can chose the "text version" link to see
the document's contents in an unformatted view.
Read more about our PhoneBook and PDF search at:
http://www.google.com/help/features.html
Google goes DoCoMo in Japan and expands across Europe
via Vizzavi
The newest way to use Google in Japan is on NTT's extremely popular
DoCoMo i-mode mobile phones. Google is the first search engine enabling
access to the entire World Wide Web from these ubiquitous devices.
DoCoMo i-mode users can search and browse more than 1.3 billion
Internet web pages, automatically translated from HTML into a format
optimized for wireless phones.
Japanese Googlers (or those visiting Japan) can access the service now
at http://www.google.com/imode
Meanwhile, Google is enjoying increased popularity across Europe as
Vizzavi's preferred search engine partner. Vizzavi, the rapidly growing
joint venture between Vodafone Group plc and Vivendi Universal,
currently offers Google enhanced service in the United Kingdom
(www.vizzavi.co.uk) and the Netherlands (www.vizzavi.nl), with service
to other countries to be rolled our shortly.
Read more about Vizzavi and Google here:
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease49.html
Google acquires Deja.com Usenet database
On February 12, Google acquired Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service.
This acquisition provides Google with Deja's entire Usenet archive
(dating back to 1995). Google is working quickly to make all this
material available for browsing and searching.
Already available at http://groups.google.com,
is a new Usenet search feature that enables Google users
to access a wealth of information contained in more than
six months of Usenet newsgroup postings and message threads
- more than was available with Deja's default setting previously.
Once the full Deja Usenet archive is added, users will be
able to search and browse more than 500 million archived
messages with the speed and efficiency of a Google search.
In addition to expanding the amount of searchable data,
Google will soon provide improved browsing capabilities
and newsgroup posting.
As former Deja users patiently await the launch of the full archive,
Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page welcomed them as new users of
Google. According to Larry, "With more than 500 million individual
messages and growing fast, the Usenet community is one of the most
active and valuable information sources on the Internet."
Moving up in the world. Google rates with Media Metrix
Our numbers have been quietly, but quickly growing over the past few
months. According to the February report from Internet ratings service
Media Metrix:
- Google is #21 among the Top 100 PROPERTIES (up 4 from last month)
- We have 9.8 million users in the US (a million more than January)
- Google reaches 11.4% of those using the Web in the US
Whether you're a long time Googler or just getting to know us, your
searches are important to us. Let us know what you think of our new
services, and Keep on Googlin!
The Google Team
