Whether you're shopping for shoes, planning a trip or watching a funny video, you probably don't think much about where that website you're on actually "lives." Though they seem just to exist in some "cloud" out there in "cyberspace," all websites are actually hosted on computers, similar to the one you have at home or work. But millions of websites processing terabytes of data every day -- all of those shopping and video queries -- require much more than a single machine, and they need to be housed somewhere. While some webmasters may run their website off of a small server in their basement, more commonly websites are run off of a stack of computers (a server rack), which lives in a warehouse-type building called a data center. Almost any company that stores or processes information either owns data centers or leases space in them, including banks, insurers, airlines and of course, technology companies. To process the millions of searches, emails, documents and more that come across our servers every day, and to keep all of our services both fast and reliable for our users, we require significant computing power, and have invested heavily in servers and data centers across the world.
On May 21st, an official ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the opening of our newest data center in Lenoir, North Carolina. The Lenoir facility has set a precedent for Google community involvement: hundreds of our closest friends -- the citizens of Caldwell County -- came on site for what we called a "Googley BBQ." Along with pulled pork from the locally-acclaimed Hannah's, attractions included Google-colored snow cones, cotton candy, a local cover band, Google demo stations, a "Meet-a-Googler" tent, and a kiddie area with face painting, stickers, crafts, and (of course) a bouncy house in Google colors.
Lenoir sits in the heart of Caldwell County, which is known for its spectacular views of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, its close-knit communities, and its hard-working citizens, and is along the famous "20 miles of furniture" on N.C. highway 321. Though many furniture industry jobs in the area have been lost in recent years, now technology companies are moving to the region, and a focus on technology education is helping to usher Caldwell into the 21st century.
Several speakers at the ribbon-cutting, including the Mayor of Lenoir, David Barlow; County Commissioner Herb Greene; and the Governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley, voiced this sentiment, each hopeful that other technology companies will consider Google's presence and set up shop as well. What's not to love about an area with a beautiful landscape, a home-town feel, and such a wonderful and welcoming community? Yeah, we couldn't find anything either.
Lenoir Googlers are still floating on at least cloud seven or eight about playing host at our new site. We couldn't have done it without the local firefighters, police, Chamber of Commerce and government representatives who went out of their way to make sure everyone had fun that day -- helped, of course, by the hundreds of folks who joined us in celebrating. But what's more, we are excited that we will soon be bringing this newest data center online, as another step to ensure that our services remain lightning fast and nearly 100% reliable, no matter where on the planet you may be.
2008年06月09日
Get your transit schedules and directions with Google Maps for mobile
What with everyone thinking about ways to save on gas and avoid driving, one obvious tactic is to take public transportation. With that (and the environment) in mind, we continue to work with public transportation agencies to get bus and train schedules, and integrate this information into Google Maps. We just launched transit directions in Google Maps for mobile so that you can get transit directions while you're out and about in more than 50 cities worldwide. Right now transit directions are available on the latest Google Maps for mobile release on BlackBerry and many Java-based phones. We'll be adding support for other phones shortly.
2008年06月06日
Explore Walt Disney World® Resort in 3D
Last May, Eric Schmidt and I met to talk about The Walt Disney Company’s focus on technology. We started to explore innovative ways we could work together to bring one of the world’s most magical destinations to Google Earth’s millions of users… and how our guests could be a mouse-click away from visiting the place where dreams come true.
The result is Walt Disney World® Resort in 3D, an interactive, virtual Walt Disney World completely recreated on Google Earth. This revolutionary project features 3D models of our four Orlando theme parks and more than 20 of Disney’s Resort hotels. Incredible in scope -- containing over 1,500 3D models -- Walt Disney World Resort in 3D is the most detailed 3D rendering undertaken on Google Earth to date.
From the summit of Space Mountain® to the watery confines of the Pirates of the Caribbean®, we invite you to explore the Walt Disney World Resort in Google Earth. It’s the next best thing to being there.
The result is Walt Disney World® Resort in 3D, an interactive, virtual Walt Disney World completely recreated on Google Earth. This revolutionary project features 3D models of our four Orlando theme parks and more than 20 of Disney’s Resort hotels. Incredible in scope -- containing over 1,500 3D models -- Walt Disney World Resort in 3D is the most detailed 3D rendering undertaken on Google Earth to date.
From the summit of Space Mountain® to the watery confines of the Pirates of the Caribbean®, we invite you to explore the Walt Disney World Resort in Google Earth. It’s the next best thing to being there.
More on Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)
Web publishers often ask us how they can maximize their visibility on the web. Much of this has to do with search engine optimization -- making sure a publisher's content shows up on all the search engines.
However, there are some cases in which publishers need to communicate more information to search engines -- like the fact that they don't want certain content to appear in search results. And for that they use something called the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which lets publishers control how search engines access their site: whether it's controlling the visibility of their content across their site (via robots.txt) or down to a much more granular level for individual pages (via META tags).
Since it was introduced in the early '90s, REP has become the de facto standard by which web publishers specify which parts of their site they want public and which parts they want to keep private. Today, millions of publishers use REP as an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines. Its strength lies in its flexibility to evolve in parallel with the web, its universal implementation across major search engines and all major robots, and in the way it works for any publisher, no matter how large or small.
While REP is observed by virtually all search engines, we've never come together to detail how we each interpret different tags. Over the last couple of years, we have worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! to bring forward standards such as Sitemaps and offer additional tools for webmasters. Since the original announcement, we have, and will continue to, deliver further improvements based on what we are hearing from the community.
Today, in that same spirit of making the lives of webmasters simpler, we're releasing detailed documentation about how we implement REP. This will provide a common implementation for webmasters and make it easier for any publisher to know how their REP directives will be handled by three major search providers -- making REP more intuitive and friendly to even more publishers on the web.
To see the major REP features currently implemented by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, please see our detailed post on the Webmaster Central blog.
However, there are some cases in which publishers need to communicate more information to search engines -- like the fact that they don't want certain content to appear in search results. And for that they use something called the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which lets publishers control how search engines access their site: whether it's controlling the visibility of their content across their site (via robots.txt) or down to a much more granular level for individual pages (via META tags).
Since it was introduced in the early '90s, REP has become the de facto standard by which web publishers specify which parts of their site they want public and which parts they want to keep private. Today, millions of publishers use REP as an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines. Its strength lies in its flexibility to evolve in parallel with the web, its universal implementation across major search engines and all major robots, and in the way it works for any publisher, no matter how large or small.
While REP is observed by virtually all search engines, we've never come together to detail how we each interpret different tags. Over the last couple of years, we have worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! to bring forward standards such as Sitemaps and offer additional tools for webmasters. Since the original announcement, we have, and will continue to, deliver further improvements based on what we are hearing from the community.
Today, in that same spirit of making the lives of webmasters simpler, we're releasing detailed documentation about how we implement REP. This will provide a common implementation for webmasters and make it easier for any publisher to know how their REP directives will be handled by three major search providers -- making REP more intuitive and friendly to even more publishers on the web.
To see the major REP features currently implemented by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, please see our detailed post on the Webmaster Central blog.
Google Site Search taps the power of the cloud
Search is never far from our minds -- not just on Google, but also for the millions of websites that don't yet have high-quality search. And since we've already built powerful search technologies into our computing infrastructure, site owners don't have to build it themselves. It's an aspect of something you might have heard about recently: "cloud computing".
Our ability to work in the cloud is one reason we've just announced Google Site Search with enhanced index coverage. Previously known as Custom Search Business Edition, this service gives any website the same relevance, ease of use and familiar search experience you get on Google.com. It takes just minutes to set up, and is hosted entirely by Google, so site owners can have great search capabilities with little or no maintenance and technical resources needed. We've also added enhanced index coverage and customization features that help us crawl and index all content (even pages deep within a site) -- and as a result, we can deliver comprehensive search results on any website.
It's not only webmasters who can take advantage of these features; so can site owners who want to maximize e-commerce opportunities and increase their conversions when they deliver a high-quality search experience to site visitors. Read more on the Google Enterprise blog to learn how you can offer better search on your site.
Our ability to work in the cloud is one reason we've just announced Google Site Search with enhanced index coverage. Previously known as Custom Search Business Edition, this service gives any website the same relevance, ease of use and familiar search experience you get on Google.com. It takes just minutes to set up, and is hosted entirely by Google, so site owners can have great search capabilities with little or no maintenance and technical resources needed. We've also added enhanced index coverage and customization features that help us crawl and index all content (even pages deep within a site) -- and as a result, we can deliver comprehensive search results on any website.
It's not only webmasters who can take advantage of these features; so can site owners who want to maximize e-commerce opportunities and increase their conversions when they deliver a high-quality search experience to site visitors. Read more on the Google Enterprise blog to learn how you can offer better search on your site.
