September 10, 2009

Get Your Google Voice Messages Directly in Gmail

If you use Google Voice, then you're familiar with getting notifications via email alerting you to a new voice mail message. The email contains a transcription of the message plus a link to go and listen to it.

Now, Google has updated the alert so that you can play the message directly in your Gmail acocunt. In order to access the new feature, you need to turn on the Google Voice Player in the Gmail Labs tab.

When you've listened to a voice mail in Gmail, it will sync with your Google Voice inbox. This means that once listened to, it will essentially "mark as read" in your Google Voice account as well.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

September 1, 2009

Google Investigating Reason for Widespread Gmail Outages [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Over at the Official Gmail Blog, Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar, wrote that the problem was related to a server upgrade. They underestimated the load that would be placed upon the request server, and things got bottlenecked after that.

Today, Gmail went down around 3:45 EST and the world came to a grinding halt so that millions could take to their Twitter clients and Tweet about it.

You could access your Gmail account via IMAP or POP, if you already had it set up. Some were able to access their GMail via iGoogle".

While many are speculating the cause, Google is currently saying it doesn't know what the root reason is and that they're investigating it.

Google was largely immune to the recent cyberattacks on Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal. It will be interesting to see what the cause of this outage was. Of course, Google has suffered outages before which had nothing to do with cybersecurity.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 19, 2009

Google Adds YouTube Feature to Gmail Labs

When you get a link to a YouTube video to your Gmail account, wouldn't it be nice to view the video right then and there without opening a new tab or window? You're not the only one who thinks so. A new Gmail Labs feature enables just that.

Turn on the new feature by clicking on "Settings" in the top right corner of your Gmail page. Then look for "Labs." Previews for Picasa, Flickr and Yelp have been added as well.

Related Reading: Gmail Offers Extra Level of Protection for Late Night and Weekend Emails Google Returns Search Web Option To Gmail

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 7, 2008

Gmail Offers Extra Level of Protection for Late Night and Weekend Emails

Ok, this is isn't search related, but it's too much fun not to cover. Gmail has released another Labs feature. This one is called Mail Goggles and it's intended to help you avoid sending those late night or weekend emails that you'll regret later.

When the feature is enabled, you have to answer simple math problems before an email will send during those most vulnerable emails-I-will-later-regret times.

Of course, if you're having a perfectly sane moment but math isn't your strong suit, you'll need to break out your trusty calculator (or enter that math problem into Google search).

But at least now there's technology that has your back in those weak moments.

Related Reading: Google Responds to Gmail Privacy Concerns Gmail and Search/E-Mail Integration

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 26, 2008

Google Getting Sued For $1 Billion Over Gmail Tool

Apparently Chicago-based firm LimitNone is suing Google for misappropriating the trade secrets of its "gMove" application that Google allegedly used to develop its Email Uploader.

The two-count lawsuit also claims Google violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP - "the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system," SlashDot noted.

Details of the suit can be found in the press release sent out by the law firm.

“Its shocking that Google would engage in this type of conduct; particularly when the other party is a small software company that built its business specifically to help Google sell its existing and future products,” said Susan Greenspon of the Chicago office of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. “People need to realize that Google is just another large publicly traded corporation that will do whatever it takes to increase its revenue, even if that means risking its reputation among developers.”

The lawsuit alleges that in February, 2007 Google launched a suite of business software applications called Google Apps. The software was designed to challenge Microsoft's Office suite of products (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) which has 500 million users. According to the lawsuit, unlike Microsoft's products, Google Apps does not require a customer to download software onto his or her computer. Instead, Google Apps is a collection of web-based applications that reside on Google's servers. The lawsuit alleges at the time of its launch, however, Google did not have a workable way to enable Microsoft Outlook users to easily migrate their email (called gMail), calendar and contacts to Google's platform.

In early 2007, LimitNone developed just such a product to solve this problem and in March confidentially demonstrated the migration tool to senior members of the Google Apps team. According to the complaint, the Google Apps executives invited LimitNone to be part of the Google Enterprise Professional Program, to further develop and market the tool, and assured the company that it had no intention of developing a similar product.

The lawsuit alleges the tool, which was originally named “MY GRATE” was later renamed, at Google's insistence, “gMove”. Though the product retailed for $29, Google asked that LimitNone sell it to Google's customers for $19.

The lawsuit claims that throughout the remainder of 2007, Google promoted LimitNone and gMove and repeatedly told company executives that it would not develop a competing product. Google highlighted gMove on its website and introduced the company to its largest customers (including Proctor & Gamble, Intel, Orbitz, Morgan Stanley and Toys “R” Us). In addition, Google asked LimitNone to present the product to its technical sales personnel, to meet with the Google Open Source team and to continuously share updated versions of gMove.

In December, 2007, as detailed in the complaint Google told LimitNone that it would, in fact, be releasing a competing product and giving it away for free to its “Premier” customers. The lawsuit alleges that Google's product, called “Google Email Uploader” steals gMove's look, feel and functionality.

According to the complaint, Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program, told LimitNone that the potential for 50 million users – was “just too big to come from someone else” and that “this is how Google operates.”

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 18, 2007

Gmail Holding A T-Shirt Design Competition With Sweet Prizes

Gmail with online "do-it-yourself" t-shirt design/printer Threadless has started a competition to design the GMail t-shirt. The prizes include an iPhone, cash and other Google swag!

Hey for an iPhone and $2,000 even I may take a stab at it!

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:40 AM | Permalink

July 9, 2007

Google Pays $625 Million for Email Security Company

Google bought Postini Inc. - the San Carlos, California-based email security company - for $625 million, according to a Bloomberg report today.

The purchase strengthens Google's ability to compete with Microsoft's Outlook product and allow them to market email services to businesses.

``This brings Gmail up to enterprise class, embedding the security,'' said Peter Firstbrook, a research director at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:40 AM | Permalink

March 20, 2007

Gmail Blocking Yahoo Groups Emails

The ever vigilant Barry Schwartz posted about this today. Seems Google does not like Yahoo Groups.

Interesting that they have been aware of it for 3-4 days and the problem still has not been corrected.

Now come on guys the "Do No Evil" credo is getting a little thin. As I had said a while ago I want Larry and Sergey's definition of Evil to be the one that is used when I am standing at the gates of heaven.... only chance I have of getting in!

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:43 AM | Permalink

February 27, 2007

Gmail Domain At Risk

Seems Google's Gmail domain maybe in jeopardy. Following the English court decision against Google, the British company is coming to the United States to further challenge the search engine's ownership.

Jason Lee Miller of Web Pro News outlines the story well.

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:27 PM | Permalink

November 3, 2006

Gmail Tests Open In Google Spreadsheets Link

Philipp Lenssen reports that Google is testing a link to open your Microsoft Excel documents within Google's Spreadsheets application. I tried sending myself an XLS document, but I did not get the "Open In Google Spreadsheets" hyperlink. Philipp has a screen capture of it in action, and he explains, "We can expect much more of this cross-integration to be rolled out in the future."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:22 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2006

Gmail Mobile Client Released

Google just announced the release of a mobile client to manage your gmail account on your mobile device. The new benefits include; 5X faster, reduced clicks and scrolling required, plus attachments are "viewable and automatically resized to fit the user's phone." You can download the client on your mobile devise by visiting http://gmail.com/app on your mobile browser. For detailed help, visit here - I personally had trouble installing it on my Treo 700P. There is also a great review at MobileCrunch.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

October 31, 2006

15GB Gmail Accounts?

Google Operating System reports that some users of Google Apps for Your Domain are noticing that they have 13GB more space then they originally had. Google Operating System asks if Google is just being "generous" or is this an initial "promotion for a paid service."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:35 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Reading Other People's Gmail Via Bloglines

Using Bloglines to snoop on people's private Gmail from Martin Belam looks at how he accidentally stumbled upon email feeds that individuals are posting to Bloglines. To be fair, it's an issue that could happen to any "private" feed that someone unknowingly shares to the public.

Gmail allows people to get a feed of their email, as covered in these help pages. That lets you see the subject of your emails along with short descriptions. But even this small amount of information might be too embarrassing for some people to have made public.

How would those summaries get made public at all? In the case Martin looks at, people are adding their Gmail feeds to Bloglines but leaving those feeds public for others to view. That's how he stumbled upon them.

Google does warn about this, but he thinks the warning could be more visible. Perhaps -- but it's also worth keeping in mind that using an online news reader means you need to carefully consider ANY feed you take and whether those settings are public or not.

Postscript From Bloglines:

Bloglines is committed to online privacy and we take our role in this effort seriously. I'd like to help correct some of the misconceptions and explain how Bloglines privacy works in regards to both search and feeds as well as how to use Bloglines properly to generate secure feeds.

The main issue at hand is the appearance of Gmail accounts in Bloglines and a users's ability to subscribe to these feeds (or search for posts from these feeds).

The examples displayed were actually Gmail accounts registered through a third party (Feedburner) and then subscribed to within Bloglines.

Bloglines actually provides HTTP authentication for secure feeds. When this method is used, Bloglines secures the feed so that it can not be searched on or subscribed to except by the owner of the feed.

However, when the user generates their feed through a third party like Feedburner, the authentication portion has been removed from Bloglines' control and we have no way to identify and secure the feed. As a result the feed and it's previously secure data become public. Clearly this is a problem and we are in contact with Feedburner and other third parties to help them better inform and protect their users.

The other issue is the definition and understanding of "private" feeds within Bloglines. Marking a feed as private in Bloglines only hides the feed from your public blogroll and your identity from the feed's list of subscribers. We try to make this clear to Bloglines users by prominently displaying the following note during the feed subscription process:

"Private subscriptions don't show up in blogrolls and you will not be listed as a public subscriber. However, the feed and all its posts will remain available to the public via Bloglines and Ask.com Blog & Feed Search. Exceptions are Bloglines email subscriptions and feeds that require http authentication. In both cases, the feed and its posts will not be included in search results."

This issue has reminded us that there is still some confusion about privacy in the world of feeds. We recognize that a better system of limiting access to feeds is needed as more content becomes syndicated or syndicatable. We have been leading the effort to build new safeguards into syndications standards and are hopeful that some type of Feed Access Standard will provide further security for users and their feeds.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:36 AM | Permalink

September 14, 2006

Google Fights To Use "Gmail" Name In Germany

News.com has a great write up named Behind Google's German courtroom battle. Google had to stop using the name Gmail in the UK, the same thing is being fought over in Germany. Daniel Giersch, a German venture capitalist, has who has a six-year-old trademark registration of g-mail, will not give up his trademark to Google. The German courts have required Google to remove all references to "Gmail" on Google's pages within Germany. Google is trying to argue that "G-mail" is different from "Gmail" and they should be allowed to use the name in Germany. Google is not giving up on this battle, like they did in the UK.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

August 28, 2006

Google Apps for Your Domain Live

Google announced the official launch of Google Apps for Your Domain. Everyone is talking about how this is an enterprise solution because it allows companies use Google products, currently Gmail, Calendar, Page Creator and Talk on their own domain. You can expect many of Google's other products to be rolled into this service, including Google Analytics, Google Notebook, Google Spreadsheets and others.

Let's step back, on February 10th Google launched a beta program named Gmail for Domains, they initially got some universities to sign up and then some small business also signed up (from what I hear).

Do you think IBM, Oracle, Pitney Bowes or other Fortune 500 would switch over? Is it Google's hope that they would consider it? Google seems like they will be offering a premium version of this service, but they don't have one at this time. Would I sign up my company on this program? Honestly, I highly doubt it. Why? Privacy, configurability, security, expandability and something doesn't sit right with moving my email or calendaring systems over to a free service - I need to pay someone in order to have someone to be held accountable.

Want to discuss in our forums? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread named Google Apps for Your Domain.

Postscript From Danny: Information Week has a long story on the program here, and there's lots of coverage from elsewhere you'll find on Techmeme here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:01 AM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Gmail In Japanese

Reuters reports that Google is releasing a localized Japanese-language version of Gmail in Japan today. I cannot find the URL to access it as of yet, but hopefully it will be announced shortly.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:06 AM | Permalink

July 28, 2006

Google Hands Over Email In Hate Case

Feds Retrieve Google Records after Gmail Used for Hate Speech from eWeek covers how the US FBI asked for and was given an email and some session information from someone accused of sending a threatening letter to the NAACP.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:14 AM | Permalink

July 3, 2006

Google's Non Search Products A Flop

BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the competition "shivers," Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those non-search products. Google's Gtalk is currently ranked number ten with two percent market share, Google Finance is the "40th-most-visited finance site," and Gmail "is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail." So with all these product launches, is Google a threat? Read more at BusinessWeek.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink

June 19, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions

Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS.

Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine, and a way of reducing the amount of irrelevant results in a search by analyzing an initial set of results, identifying an appropriate additional query term from those results, and searching the original results again but with the additional query term included in the search.

Go Daddy describes a way of fighting spam in emails. Xerox employs collaborative filtering from previous users' searches to predict search results. Apostolos Gerasoulis, from Ask.com, with a couple of co-inventors, ranks and displays pages (objects) based upon linkage and textual data, and then defines a way to identifiy and assign topics to them.

Google

Email Spam

Emails with links in them could be considered spam if the links point to pages that are in a conceptual category considered spammy. This patent application really doesn't describe the concept categorization part of the process. That's done in a related patent application mentioned within this document, and the related document lists Georges Harik as one inventor. Dr. Harik's name is on a very large percentage of the patent applications involving Gmail-type processes.

Method and system to detect e-mail spam using concept categorization of linked content Invented by Johnny Chen US Patent Application 20060122957 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A system and method for detecting undesired electronic messages (e.g., spam) using concept categorization of hyperlinks is disclosed. A server receives an electronic message and retrieves web pages that correspond to hyperlinks in the message. The server performs concept categorization on the retrieved web pages based on semantic relationships in the received information to determine whether the electronic message meets predefined criteria associated with undesired messages.

Searching and Aggregating Product Reviews

If Google wanted to get into the product or services review business, the next patent filing describes a blue print for the process that might make an effective and innovative system.

Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl and Mayur D. Datar US Patent Application 20060129446 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The embodiments disclosed herein include new, more efficient ways to collect product reviews from the Internet, aggregate reviews for the same product, and provide an aggregated review to end users in a searchable format. One aspect of the invention is a graphical user interface on a computer that includes a plurality of portions of reviews for a product and a search input area for entering search terms to search for reviews of the product that contain the search terms.

Scaling and Distributing Data

Arvind Jain is the head of Research and Development in Google's Bangalore office, and has spoken at a number of conferences on infrastructure projects and issues involving such things as Google's crawl and indexing system, distributed file replication system, and compression techniques for large scale storage systems. He's listed as the inventor for this next Google filing.

System and method for scalable data distribution Invented by Arvind Jain US Patent Application 20060126201 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 10, 2004

Abstract

A system having a resource manager, a plurality of masters, and a plurality of slaves, interconnected by a communications network. To distribute data, a master determined that a destination slave of the plurality slaves requires data. The master then generates a list of slaves from which to transfer the data to the destination slave. The master transmits the list to the resource manager. The resource manager is configured to select a source slave from the list based on available system resources. Once a source is selected by the resource manager, the master receives an instruction from the resource manager to initiate a transfer of the data from the source slave to the destination slave. The master then transmits an instruction to commence the transfer.

Autolinking

Google's Autolink raised a lot of eyebrows, and brought some negative reactions. A Search Engine Watch Blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out defined many of the issues around the toolbar feature. The following patent application explains how such a system might work from the search engine's perspective.

Providing useful information associated with an item in a document Invented by Gueorgui Djabarov US Patent Application 20060129910 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

A method includes recognizing an item within a first document based on a pattern associated with the item but not the exact content of the item. The method further includes identifying a link for the item and providing a second document that includes information associated with the item when the link for the item is selected.

Yahoo

Choosing Better Ads through User Behavior

Some queries involve the use of concepts and units, as described in at least five Yahoo patent filings (see previous patent posts in the Yahoo sections from Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters and More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches.)

But sometimes a two term query isn't a concept as much as it is a couple of keywords that someone may use to search for something. If that person performs a second search after deleting one of the words, then the record of that deletion and second search might help Yahoo calculate "deletion probability scores" for words being used in these kind of two term queries.

This can be helpful when there isn't a good keyword based advertising match for that query, but there might be a good match individually for each of the terms that make up the query. The "deletion probability scores" can help determine which of the two terms to show keyword-based advertising for in search results.

System and methods for ranking the relative value of terms in a multi-term search query using deletion prediction Invented by Rosemary Jones and Daniel C. Fain US Patent Application 20060129534 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The likely relevance of each term of a search-engine query of two or more terms is determined by their deletion probability scores. If the deletion probability scores are significantly different, the deletion probability score can be used to return targeted ads related to the more relevant term or terms along with the search results. Deletion probability scores are determined by first gathering historical records of search queries of two or more terms in which a subsequent query was submitted by the same user after one or more of the terms had been deleted. The deletion probability score for a particular term of a search query is calculated as the ratio of the number of times that particular term was itself deleted prior to a subsequent search by the same user divided by the number of times there were subsequent search queries by the same user in which any term or terms including that given term was deleted by the same user prior to the subsequent search. Terms are not limited to individual alphabetic words.

Browser Interface Helpers

This next document describes some ways to provide additional dynamic information to someone via a toolbar styled interface, while they are browsing pages on the web.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface Invented by Thomas J. Shafron Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060129937 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of dynamically controlling and displaying an Internet browser interface, and to a dynamically controllable Internet browser interface. In accordance with the present invention, a browser interface may be customized using a controlling software program that may be provided by an Internet content provider, an ISP, or that may reside on an Internet user's computer. The controlling software program enables the Internet user, the content provider, or the ISP to customize and control the information and/or functionality of a user's browser and browser interface.

RSS Enhancements

The following three Yahoo filings all list the same inventors, including John Thrall who is the head of media search engineering, for Yahoo Search. They provide different aspects of using RSS with multimedia files.

Syndicating multiple media objects with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, and John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129917 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating more than one media object in an element using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). In one embodiment, multiple media objects with at least one shared characteristic are syndicated under the same element. For example, a single media object can come in multiple formats and/or compression rates.

Syndicating multimedia information with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129907 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for adding descriptive information to a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) document. The descriptive information describes the content of media objects syndicated through the document. The descriptive information can be used to provided additional information to a subscriber, and can be used in searching for syndicated media content.

RSS rendering via a media player Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129916 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating media objects through a link to a media player using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). A content provider may not want to give direct access to a media object to a subscriber. Instead a content provider can give the subscriber a link to a media player that can access the media object.

Microsoft

Searching electronic program guide data Invented by Pradhan S. Rao, David Hendler Sloo, Daniel Danker, and George K. Nyako Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060130098 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

Searching electronic program guide (EPG) data is described. The EPG data may be compartmentalized into channel metadata that describes characteristics of one or more channels and content metadata that describes characteristics of one or more content items. In a implementation, a method includes searching channel metadata and content metadata. A result of the searching is formed for output in conjunction with an electronic program guide (EPG).

System and method for indexing and prefiltering Invented by Brian Burdick, Joshua J. Forman, Kevin P. Kornelson, Murali Vajjiravel, and Rajeev Prasad Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060129555 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method and system are provided for selecting advertisements for presentation to a user in response to a user search query. The system may include a keyword server for parsing the user search query and an index server for receiving the parsed search query. The index server may include an index of advertising phrases and pre-filtering components for comparing index entries to the parsed user search query in order to discard non-matching index entries and locate matching entries. The pre-filtering components may include either a phrase length pre-filtering component or a word hash pre-filtering component. The system may additionally include a listing server for sorting through the matching entries located by the index server and further filtering the matching entries for retrieval and presentation to the user.

IBM

Ring method, apparatus, and computer program product for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment Invented by Wade Shelby Beavers and David Joseph Borrillo Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129530 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment. A user enters a search term and the search term is submitted to multiple selected search engines. Search results are gathered from each selected search engine. A search ring is generated including a ring section to represent each of the selected search engines for enabling the user to view search results from one or more of the selected search engines.

Method and system for suggesting search engine keywords Invented by Cary Lee Bates Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129531 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query having one or more keywords. The documents in the result set from that search query are analyzed to identify one or more additional keywords that further segment, or separate, the initial result set. These additional keywords are presented to the user who then selects whether to include or exclude documents matching the additional keywords. In this way, the number of documents in the initial result set is reduced in a relatively quick and effortless manner.

Go Daddy

Email filtering system and method Invented by Brad Owen and Jason Steiner US Patent Application 20060129644 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention allow filtering out spam and phishing email messages based on the links embedded into the email messages. In a preferred embodiment, an Email Filter extracts links from the email message and obtains desirability values for the links. The Email Filter may route the email message based on desirability values. Such routing includes delivering the email message to a Recipient, delivering the message to a Quarantine Mailbox, or deleting the message.

Xerox

Personalized web search method Invented by Lisa S. Purvis Assigned to Xerox Corporation US Patent Application 20060129533 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

A method for contextualizing search results is disclosed. The method includes performing a traditional web query that returns a set of result pages, using collaborative filtering techniques to generate a set of predicted pages, comparing the set of predicted pages with the set of result pages, and ranking the set of result pages so that result pages that are also included in the set of predicted pages are ranked higher than those that are not. Methods herein also contemplate using the search history of the user or others to refine the results of searches.

Ask.com

Relevancy-based database retrieval and display techniques Invented by Tao Yang, Wei Wang, and Apostolos Gerasoulis US Patent Application 20060129552 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

Techniques to retrieve, rank and display data objects retrieved form a database are described. In particular, methods to assign a global ranking value to a data object based on a combination of that object's link-based (e.g., vector-space cluster analysis) and text-based (e.g., word frequency) ranks are described. Additional techniques to determine a set of concepts, topics or key words associated with each retrieved data objects are described.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:42 PM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

#&@$%@ Gmail!

It's been six hours now without POP access to my Gmail account. I've been through this irritating problem before with Google, as covered here and here, as have others. Annoyingly, Google still hasn't provided any better help information about it, much less some type of status report page to tell you if it is localized to a particular area or not. My solution is easy -- I just redirected everything back to my own POP server, and eventually I'll get the 60 or so messages from Gmail into Outlook when the problem inevitably goes away. Others probably aren't so happy. But as my Top 25 Things I Hate About Google piece touched on, since you can't pay for support on anything, you're pretty much stuck. C'mon Google, fix it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

May 12, 2006

Gmail Adds "Gmail Pictures"

Garett Rogers reports that Gmail has announced the addition of Gmail Pictures. Gmail pictures allows you to add a picture of yourself or for your contacts. To add your own picture follow this instructions, to add a picture for your contacts follow this instructions. You can also define who can and cannot see your picture, more on that here.

As an FYI - Apple has this feature built into "Address Book" and "iChat" and "Apple Mail" for a while now.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:32 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2006

Deleted Gmail Account? Kiss Your Email Goodbye!

Worried that the government's going to force Google to hand over your email? Fret not. Just delete your account. Do that, and it's gone forever, as some people are finding out.

Wait a minute! Wasn't there all that controversy about how even if you delete your mail, Google still keeps copies of it because of multiple backups? Well, it looks like those backups might not be as foolproof as they sound.

Last month, Google Blogoscoped featured the sad story of someone whose account had disappeared, which ZDNet UK later picked up on. Now in a follow up story from ZDNet, Google denies fault over Mail problems, Google explains that accounts have been deleted in only a few cases and that it is not responsible because these were cases where the users' passwords were given out to others.

For the record, Google does warn that if you delete an account:

Once you close your Gmail account, you can't reactivate it, and you won't be able to retrieve any messages. After a certain period of time, Gmail recycles your username, so we can't guarantee that it will be available if you decide to open another Gmail account.

But one who may (or may not) have been a victim of a hacked account fairly asks:

Even if someone did get my password somehow, shouldn't the original creator of the account be sent some sort of confirmation before actually going ahead with it? Gmail should pick up on that and fix this hole, otherwise it'll be chaos.

Assuming the deletion is spotted fast enough, you'd think the data wouldn't immediately disappear. After all, the Google FAQ on data retention says (bold parts are Google's own):

Some news stories have suggested that Google intends to keep copies of users' email messages even after they've deleted them, or closed their accounts. This is simply not true. Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical.

So fair to say, if your account was deleted and you discovered this fast enough -- I'd say within few days -- it seems like it could be restored off one of those multiple backup copies specifically retained for this type of situation.

Meanwhile, Google's Gmail fails to hit the spot from Bloomberg looks at how Gmail has far fewer users in the US than Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Of course, Gmail still remains a closed service. Yes, it's much easier for people to get accounts these days -- but I'd say having 7 million users despite the barrier Google throws up is a success, rather than failure. But the figures show a slowing in take-up despite it being easier to get in. Some are said to find the interface offputting.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

March 17, 2006

Judge Requires Google to Give Gmail Emails to Courts

News.com reports that a judge in San Francisco is requiring Google to hand over all the emails of a specific gmail user, even the deleted emails. Since Google stores deleted emails for an undisclosed amount of time, the number of emails that can be used against the plaintiffs, AmeriDebt and founder Andris Pukke, could be "tens of thousands." The case is about a credit counseling company that failed to use the customer's money to pay the creditors.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:14 AM | Permalink

March 3, 2006

Gmail Fixes JavaScript Security Hole Via Slashdot, Vulnerability in Gmail covers how JavaScript code sent from Yahoo Mail to Gmail reportedly would run in the preview pane of Gmail. Google quickly fixed this security hole, as reported by News.com soon after.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:07 AM | Permalink

February 24, 2006

Google Mac Widgets for Blogger, Gmail and Search History

Yesterday the Google Blog informed us that three new Google Widgets for the Apple Macintosh's OS X Tiger have been released. Widgets on a Mac come by way of Apple Dashboard that basically allows you to press a key on your keyboard, and these widgets begin to hover over your desktop and applications. Widgets allow you to perform routine tasks quickly but I have disabled dashboard on my computer due to performance issues (that is an other story). The three widgets released are for;

1. Posting Quick Blogger Entries
2. Checking your Gmail Account
3. Viewing Your Past Search History at Google

You can download these widgets to your Apple computer by visiting http://www.google.com/macwidgets/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

February 20, 2006

Voicemail Coming to Google Talk & Gmail?

Garett Rogers at Googling Google reported on Saturday that he found signs in the new source code of Google Talk of voicemail features. The voicemail features are hinted to in a line of code for filtering Google Mail and Talk results.

Rogers also found a line suggesting evite.com integration, however someone commenting on his blog downplays this as new, explaining it seems designed to prevent Gmail invite links from appearing on email sent from the evite.com domain.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:02 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2006

Gmail for Domains Beta

Yesterday I reported forum buzz rumors at the Search Engine Roundtable that GMail for domains is coming soon. Today official word came from the Google Blog that Gmail is "hosting Gmail accounts with SJCC domain addresses." If you want to participate in the beta, visit https://www.google.com/hosted/.

An update on the News.com blog has a link to the San Jose City College Gmail login screen. As I said in my post at the Roundtable, I believe this is a great way for Google to capture a larger user base. Now that Yahoo offers Web mail for your domain for a fee, possibly Google will enable it for free.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:24 PM | Permalink

February 7, 2006

Google: Chat a Natural Fit with Email

In its ever expanding push into communications, Google has added chat to Gmail, tightly integrating the new feature with the archiving and search capabilities found in the mail program. More about the new feature in today's SearchDay article, Google Integrates Chat with Gmail.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Time For Dinner: Email/Gmail Team Leaders from Google, MS, and Yahoo Break Bread With WSJ Writer

Inside Google points us to this interesting read about email services by Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal. The article is titled: The Men Who Came To Dinner, and What They Said About Email and reports on a recent dinner Gomes had with email/Gmail team leaders: Paul Buchheit (Google), Kevin Doerr (Microsoft), and Ethan Diamond (Yahoo).

From the article: The evening wasn't all a Gmail love-in, though. The Microsoft and Yahoo representatives said their many millions of users might not accept some of Gmail's departures from email norms, such as the way the program groups messages into "conversations." The two men also razzed Mr. Buchheit a bit, saying that it had been easy for Google to promise a lot of storage to its users because it carefully controlled how many users Gmail would have by requiring an invitation to get an account.

Indeed, more than 18 months after its unveiling, Gmail is still a beta, or "test" product. But so are the new email versions the Microsoft and Yahoo programmers are working on. And no one is saying when any of the beta periods will be over.

I've been a Yahoo Beta Mail user for several months and love it. In terms of space, I have almost 70,000 messages (many lengthy press releases) stored and haven't even reached the 50% mark in my 2.0GB of storage. I wonder if I'll soon be able to "tag" my Yahoo Mail for better searching?

I'm also looking forward to trying the new Windows Live Mail beta if and when I get an invite. You can follow what MSN is up to in terms of email here and also register for the beta.

I'm also wondering if with its new ownership and the call from Barry Diller to expand the number of employees it has, Ask.com will release its own email service in 2006? Yes, I know Ask Jeeves also operates MyWay.com, which does offer free email, but I'm thinking of a Ask.com branded service that might also take advantage of the "universal mailbox" concept being used by Bloglines.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:19 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2005

The "Switching to Gmail" Guide from Google

While I was doing some work this weekend I came what appears to be a new "guide" from Google that's designed to assist users of other email services in a switch to Gmail. Yes, more good marketing from Mountain View.

The "Switching to Gmail" guide is a set of pages where, after the user enters their current, non-Gmail address (note that they use Yahoo Mail and Hotmail in an example), they receive a customized guide (based on the current service) to switch to the still beta, Gmail.(-:

A non-customized guide "generic" guide is available here.

The guide includes how to handle importing contacts, announcing your new Gmail address, reminding friends that you've switched, and what to do if you're keeping your old address.

Postscipt: If you want to see what a customized guide looks like, just enter any email address for a service where customized guides are available. If a customized guide isn't available, you're sent to the generic page. Examples: Hotmail or Yahoo Mail.

At this point I noticed that customized guides aren't available for services like AOL, Earthlink, or MyWay.com. However, I did come across a personalized guide for Comcast mail users.

Google can also use the info (the email addresses) entered into the address box for market research purposes. I wonder if they also offer accounts to people who might not have Gmail accounts when they review the pages? I just entered one of my addresses from a major service. I'll let you know if I get an invite.

Postscript 2: For more Gmail info (including some switching to Gmail info), check Philipp's Unofficial Gmail FAQ.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:20 PM | Permalink

December 15, 2005

Google Gmail Now Accessible via Mobile Phones

If you've got a web-enabled mobile phone and a Gmail account, you can now access your mail on the run. Gmail mobile allows you to get your mail from just about any mobile phone browser, and most of the key features of Gmail are availble in the smaller format as well.

Gmail mobile detects the type of device you're using, and formats your mail accordingly, meaning you'll have a different view using a comparatively wide-screen Treo than a smaller Motorola handset. You'll also be able to view attachments, including Office files and PDF documents.

Gmail mobile also synchs with your computer-based account, so messages read on your phone will display as read next time you log into Gmail on your computer.

Another cool feature is "call to reply." If you have saved the phone number of an email sender in your contacts list, you have the option to reply via email or by calling them on the phone when using Gmail mobile.

Google has also added a vacation autoresponder and the ability to create contact groups to Gmail, features available both on the web and through Gmail mobile.

To access Gmail mobile, just enter m.gmail.com on your mobile phone browser.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:44 PM | Permalink

December 7, 2005

Tweaks to Gmail Reported

Google Blogscoped with a nice chunk of info about changes and additions to Gmail. You'll learn that mail attachments from Word, Acrobat and others can now be viewed at HTML directly in your browser, Gmail sports a "Call and IM for free with Google Talk" advertisement button (let's cross-promote shall we) and finally, Philipp informs us that Gmail's "Move to trash" button has been relabeled and now reads "Delete."

Also now widely avaiable: Gmail Clips. Read your RSS feeds in Gmail. Danny first blogged about Gmail clips becoming available for some users in April. Today's announcement comes just a few days after Yahoo announced that their Yahoo Mail beta was now offering an RSS reader.

Postscript: ZDNet's Garrett Rogers has more on new Gmail features including:

From Garrett's post: Google will now also scan your emails and display relevant information about things it finds in your email, such as driving directions and package tracking. This mashup information will be displayed on the right hand side of the screen ? probably above the Google ads.

The Google info page makes it clear that, "No humans read the content of your email in order to generate these links and none of them are sponsored by advertisers." Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if Google gets any negative feedback from those concerned with privacy.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:05 PM | Permalink

December 1, 2005

Google Brings Anti-Virus Scanning to Gmail

Word from Gmail team at Google this afternoon that they've just launches anti-virus scanning to the service for all incoming and outgoing attachments. More about how it works here. No word if they are using they're own virus scanning software or licensing it from a third party.

Yahoo Mail includes anti-virus scanning and cleaning software from Norton. Hotmail also offers anti-virus scanning.

Postscript: Via a Google spokesperson, we've learned that the Gmail anti-virus scanning software is coming from a third party. However, Google would not name the company.

Want to discuss this new Gmail service? Check out this thread in the Sew Forums.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:45 PM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Gmail Never Hacked, Google Says

While Red Herring reports that Gmail was vulnerable to hacking, Google says Gmail was never hacked and that Gmail users were never at any serious threat.

According to Google, the vulnerability would only work if someone knowingly provided the authentication token that appears in the browser address field after someone logs in. The token is that big stream of numbers and letters, such as:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?auth=hdhd9dmndsa8a7nmnmnds89a8fnm43nmn4589pnbmnfpnusdaa8

I've bolded it (and the characters are just something I made up, but they illustrate what you might see when logging in).

If you were to give that URL to someone else, then with further work, they might be able to log-in to your account.

Of course, if you were to give someone your Gmail account name and password, they might be able to log-in your account as well. Neither situation is likely, but the latter is much more in the realm of possibility.

Regardless, Google says it's since fixed the vulnerability, just to be absolutely safe. As for solving the problem of people sending their much more easily accessible log-in information, that remains up to the user, of course.

FYI, the 5 million Gmail user number in the story didn't come from Google, the company says. It says it still has never disclosed the total number of Gmail users out there.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:56 PM | Permalink

October 19, 2005

Gmail Becomes Googlemail in the UK

Gmail is now known (at least for the time being) as Googlemail in the UK.

Since January we've been blogging about a UK company that claims it was using the name G-mail for a mail service before Google launched their Gmail.

Today, according, to News.com, Google (at least for the present time) is changing the name of it's mail service to Googlemail in the UK.

Why did Google make the change?

A Google representative said that the search giant decided to change the suffix after protracted wranglings with research firm Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), which uses the name G-mail to refer to a part of its financial analytics software.

"We are still working with the courts and trademark office to ensure our ability to use the Gmail name, but this could take years to resolve," the representative said. "And in the meantime, we want our users to have an email address and experience they can rely on. We also want to relieve both Google and our users of the distraction of the dispute."

While all previous Gmail accounts will remain valid, new U.K. users signing up for Google's email service will be given accounts ending in @googlemail.com, rather than @gmail.com.

Additional SEW Blog Coverage + Google Accused of Issuing Misleading Statements in Gmail Name Dispute + Will GMail Be Taken to Court? + Gmail Trademark Infringement Lawsuit News

Postscript: As PL points out, Gmail is has been known as Google Mail in Germany since the summer.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:11 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2005

Gmail's Help Center Home Page Gets a Makeover

It's makeover time! The home page Gmail's Help Center has just received a makeover and its new look is now online. Most notable to my eyes is the placement of a box for the Gmail Help Discussion forum. New version here. A screen cap of how the page used to look is posted here.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:31 PM | Permalink

October 7, 2005

New Google Reader For Feed Reading

Continuing its push into the universe of blogs and feeds, Google has launched a feed reader application. Google Reader is a browser-based application that works with virtually all popular browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Google Reader is "the most comprehensive feed finder available," said Jason Shellen, the Google product manager who spearheaded the development of the program. Comprehensive, yes, but Reader also adheres to Google's trademark simple, easy-to-use design philosophy. "We're trying to find an easier find and subscribe model for feeds," said Shellen.

The program features a Google search box at the top which allows you to search for feeds or do an entire web search. Like most other feed readers out there, Google reader has two panes. The left side displays your reading list and the feeds you've subscribed to, and a preview pane on the right allows you to read feed content.

Content can be displayed by relevance or date. Reader also employs algorithms that learn your content preferences and prioritizes content accordingly. This is similar to the auto-discovery feature for news that's part of the Google Sidebar.

Built-in sharing capabilities allow you to email feeds through your Gmail account, or post content to a blog (currently this only works on Google's Blogger-powered blogs). Don't have a Gmail account yet? If you're in the U.S. and have a SMS capable phone, you can sign up for an account by following these instructions.

Google allows you to import your feed subscriptions from other readers, and provide an export mechanism so you can move your Reader subscriptions to another feed reader.

Google just announced the Reader at the Web 2.0 conference, so I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet. I did get a demo of the program last August when I visited Google, and was impressed with what I saw at the time—particularly with the auto-discovery feature that recommended feed content based on what you read. Findory offers a similar service for feeds.

To get Google Reader, visit google.com/reader.

Gary is busy playing with Reader and will post his comments on the program shortly.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:30 PM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

Export or Backup Your Gmail Contacts List with Just a Few Clicks

I noticed a small addition to the Gmail What’s New page in the past day or so that points out that it’s now VERY easy to export your Gmail contacts list offline (it’s always good to have a backup) or to use with another email reader. Simply login to your Gmail account, click your “Contacts” list (left column) and then look for the “Export” link located on the right side of the page. Your contact list is made available as a .CSV file. Additional instructions and info can be found here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 PM | Permalink

September 26, 2005

Google Accused of Issuing Misleading Statements in Gmail Name Dispute

Do you remember a blog post from a couple of week's ago about a possible lawsuit by a UK firm against Google over the name Gmail? This Sunday Times article reports that the dispute is quickly turning into a war of words as Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), the company who has been contesting the use of the Gmail trademark, says that Google has been issuing "inaccurate and misleading statements."

From the article: Times Online today had sight of an e-mail exchange between Google and the chief executive of Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) - which is threatening legal action over the trademark for GMail. In the e-mails, the IIR takes Google to task over official comments it made in response to his case.

Much more in the article: Google accused of misleading in Gmail row.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:00 PM | Permalink

September 19, 2005

Google's Now Promoting Gmail on Google Home Page

Over the weekend I began to notice that Google is now promoting Gmail on the Google home page. Here's a screen cap. The text reads:

Email can be as easy as search. Gmail.

The word Gmail is hotlinked to the Gmail login page. There, info about getting a Gmail login via cell phone (SMS, text messaging) is available. However, a potential Gmail user will find no info about how to get an account without SMS access unless they click again and find the FAQ that tells them to ask a friend who has SMS acess or already has a Gmail account. Offering a link to this info from the outset would seem to make sense and save people time.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:47 PM | Permalink

September 13, 2005

Gmail Interface Now Available in 38 Languages, 9 New Interfaces Just Added

A note on the Gmail "What's New" page alerts us to the fact that Gmail is now available in nine more languages. That makes Gmail now available 38 in languages. New interfaces for Gmail just became available in:

• Catalan
• Czech
• Estonian
• Hindi
• Lithuanian
• Romanian
• Tagalog
• Thai
• Turkish

This page offers directions about changing the default language of the Gmail interface.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:40 AM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

Will GMail Be Taken to Court?

According to a Times Online article: New legal threat to Google over GMail, a UK company is considering taking Google to court over the name Gmail after finding no joy from 15 months of negotiations and contacts.

The story says that Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) developed and began offering a web-based email service named G-Mail back in May 2002. Google's GMail service launched at the end of March 2004.

We first blogged about IIIR and trademark concerns over G-Mail back in January.

What's new today is that IIIR is announcing that after, "15 months of 'correspondence and negotiations' with Google, no agreement has been reached.

Mr [Shane] Smith, who founded the company and is the leading shareholder, told Times Online that the two companies had held "detailed discussions" over the terms of a possible settlement, with both sides making offers but failing "to meet in the middle". He said he was "reluctantly" considering taking legal action against Google, which could involve his family trust selling shares in the group to fund the claim.

According to IIIR, how much is the name GMail trademark worth?

From the article: An independent valuation report commissioned at the end of last year by IIIR, whose clients include Bank of America and Commerzbank, estimated a "conservative" value of between £25 million and £34 million for a royalty claim against Google for the G-Mail trademark.

You can read more in this four page "Google Negotiations" status report (PDF) from IIIR. Also, this PDF document contains the 19 page trademark valuation report mentioned above.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:06 PM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

Gmail Interface Now Available in 12 More Languages

A note from 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway informs us that Gmail interface is now available in 12 more languages. That makes Gmail is now availble in 29 different languages and the company says more lanugages are coming.

New Gmail Interface Languages:

• Bulgarian
• Croatian
• Greek
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Indonesian
• Latvian
• Serbian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Ukrainian
• Vietnamese

Posted by Gary Price at 3:16 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2005

Gmail Interface Now Available in Four More Languages

A post on the Google site page points out that versions of the Gmail interface are now available in Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Polish. In April, Gmail interfaces were added for numerous languages including German, Spanish, and Russian. This page explains how to change or modify the Gmail's language setting.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:22 PM | Permalink

May 2, 2005

Gmail Web Clips: More On Google's Feed Aggregator, Plus Feeds From Google News

Checking my Gmail account today, I discovered that I'm apparently now one of the few with access to the new Gmail "web clips" feed reading feature I mentioned earlier. Here's how it works and some more details.

You'll see feed headlines shown at the top of the Gmail page, above all the messages in your Inbox, when viewing an email or anything within Gmail. Here's a screenshot:

In that example, "Reuters: Oddly Enough" is the title of the feed currently being viewed. Next to it is a headline from that feed, the hyperlink taking you to the article or post. Next to that is the time the article was posted.

See the words "Web Clip" and the little < > arrows next to it? Those let you move forward or backwards through headlines in the feeds you've subscribed to.

That's it -- a rudimentary feed reader, to say the least. Unless I'm missing something, that's all you can do to view your feeds. You can't click on anything to see all headlines from a particular feed. You can't see a single page with headlines from all sources -- much less headlines and descriptions. All you can do is keep clicking the little arrows.

Odd? Yeah, but I'm sure we'll see it develop. So far, it really seems designed as a serendipitous thing. As you read different email messages, the headlines keep changing -- so it's an easy way to read mail and also perhaps spot a new news item. Or ads! That's because AdSense ads sometimes appear in that area, as well.

Google's Default & Suggested Feeds

By default, you're already subscribed to three feeds:

• Ask Yahoo
• Engadget
• Reuters: Oddly Enough

Why these three? All Google will say is that they were hand-picked with a focus on a good user experience and high quality content.

Want more? Use the Settings option in Gmail, then the Web Clips option. Look below your subscribed feeds, and there's an "Add more clips" link. In turn, that lets you pick from choices in News, Business, Lifestyle, Fun, Tech and Sports categories.

How did the 10 or so feeds featured in each category -- such as ABC News, NPR, Slashdot and Yahoo News: Most Emailed -- get such favored status? Again, Google said only that the choices were hand picked with a focus on user experience.

Google News Gains Feeds

By the way, Google News has some of its own feeds in there:

• Google News - World
• Google News - Business
• Google News - Entertainment
• Google News - Health
• Google News - Sports

Yes, that's right. You can actually get Google News content through a feed without having to resort to workarounds. But bad news, non-Gmail folks. These feeds only work for those within Gmail. I can't find a published address for them. That's kept hidden within Gmail.

You can get Google News alerts for any keyword you wish to track, of course -- but that's sent via email. In contrast, Yahoo News offers actual news feeds to the public right now, as described more here: Yahoo Gains Financial Feeds; A Revisit To Yahoo News Feeds

Also noteworthy is that the feed reader functionality changes slightly when viewing a Google News feed. A new "related articles" link appears next to the posting time and the "Web Clip" text next to the arrows changes to Google News, as shown below:

Add Any Feed & When's This Coming To Everyone?

What if you want something beyond the feeds Google recommends? No problem. You can easily add any feed you like using the Custom Clips option. Just enter the URL of the feed, and away you go.

So I'm lucky in that my Gmail account is enabled -- how about everyone else? Google says it's just a small randomly selected test right now and there's no clear timing on when it will be rolled out to more people. In the meantime, the clipless such as Steve Rubel will have to read about web clips via the Google help pages that he spotted:

• What is 'Clips'?
• What are RSS and Atom feeds?
• Can I read news, blogs, and RSS feeds in Gmail?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:49 PM | Permalink

May 1, 2005

Search Your Gmail with Google Desktop Search

If you've been wanting an option to keyword search your Gmail using Google's desktop search tool, your wait is over. A 105K plug-in was made available late last week on the GDS site called, "Larry's Gmail Indexer" (beta). It uses GMail's POP access feature to make your Gmail indexable. It's developer, Larry Gadea has more info and links to other GDS plug-ins on his site.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:29 PM | Permalink

April 15, 2005

Gmail Gains "Web Clips" Feed Reading Feature

Blogger founder and former Google employee Evan Williams spots a new "Web Clips" feed reading feature that has appeared in Google's Gmail web mail service. Gmail adds feed reading has a screenshot and details. Not all Gmail users will see this feature -- it hasn't shown up for me yet, for example.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2005

Gmail Interface Now Available in 13 Languages

We just noticed that the Gmail interface is now available 13 languages. This page explains how to change the interface to any of the following languages: + Dutch + French + German + Italian + Japanese + Korean + Portuguese + Spanish + Russian + Simplified and Traditional Chinese + UK English + US English

Posted by Gary Price at 8:59 PM | Permalink

April 1, 2005

No Foolin, Gmail Remains in Beta But Increases Amount of Storage Space

Lots of us were wondering if Gmail would leave beta today, it's first anniversary. The answer, according to this News.com article, is no. Gmail remains in beta.

However, the same story reports that Google is doubling the amount of storage space it offers from 1GB to 2GB today and then will add a "yet-to-be-determined amount of extra storage daily with no plans to stop." It looks as if the day of the unlimited inbox is here.

"We wanted to make sure we have a plan in place for when people reach their storage limit," he [Google's Georges Harik] explained. "We don't want people to worry that they might run out."

About a week ago, Yahoo announced they'll soon begin offering 1GB of storage for users of their free email service. They already provide 2GB of storage and other services for users of Yahoo Mail Plus which costs $20 per year.

Lycos UK currently offers 10GB of online storage (not only email) for about 3.50 pounds per month. Another service, Streamload(we blogged about them in January) is really a virtual desktop and storage provider. They offer 10GB of free storage (not only email, you can even stream files) but limits the amount of material you can download each month to 100Mb. For about $45/year Streamload offers unlimited storage space and the ability to download 12GB during the year. Other plans are also available.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:34 AM | Permalink

March 16, 2005

Will Gmail Officially Launch on April 1, 2005?

Arik Hesseldahl over at Forbes writes about Gmail being made available to even more people. He reports that "random users" at Google.com are being invited to open Gmail accounts. Arik then goes on to speculate that Gmail might "officially" launch on April 1st, exactly one year after the beta became available amidst talk that Gmail was just an April Fools Day prank from the Googleplex. I've heard other Google "watchers" (myself included) also speculating that April 1, 2005 will be the date of the "official" launch. Finally, a note to Forbes, it's Gmail not G-Mail. More in the article: G-mail Nearing Prime Time.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:49 AM | Permalink

February 22, 2005

Gmail Sending Direct Invites

Like some others, I was surprised to get an email notice from Google last week telling me I could have a Gmail account. I've had one since the site was launched last year courtesy of Google's PR department (current quota, 73 percent of 1GB!). However, I also signed up as if I didn't have one to see how long it took for others without some type of connection to get an invite.

Nearly 11 months later, those who enrolled in an interest list formerly offered on the site are getting the nod to come in. Sign that Gmail is about to go out to the general public? Sure seems like it, though Google itself says not to assume this is the case. More in this News.com article: Gmail moves to next stage. Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread: Gmail rollout -- finally.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:50 PM | Permalink

February 17, 2005

Hotmail Users Defect to Gmail

I just posted about an interview with Bill Gates where he calls Google a "fantastic" competitor. According to this BetaNews article, Google is not only a fantastic competitor in the web search space but also in the world of web-based email. The article reports on a new study from Return Path that says lots of Hotmail customers are swithching to Gmail.

Between 52 to 56 percent of customers switching to Gmail came from a Hotmail address each month [Jun-Dec 2004], said Return Path. This compares to only 24 to 34 percent being from a Yahoo account. The rest of Return Path's clients were switching from MSN, AOL and Comcast, though at much smaller numbers.

More in the article: Study: Half of Gmail Switchers from Hotmail.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:46 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Gmail is "Very Profitable" for Google

BBC Online looks at web-based email services in the article: E-mail is the new database. Comments from Google's Georges Harik include the fact that Gmail is "very profitable" for Google. How profitable? Harik doesn't say. Yahoo Mail (which is also searchable), Hotmail, and AOL Mail are also mentioned. Two charts containing the Top 10 e-mail services (by audience) in Europe and the US are included. The rankings use Nielsen/Netrankings data.

Top Three Email Services--Europe 1) MSN Hotmail 2) Yahoo Mail 3) GMX

Top Three Email Services--U.S. 1) Yahoo Mail 2) AOL Email 3) MSN Hotmail

Posted by Gary Price at 3:48 PM | Permalink

January 12, 2005

Bug Found in Gmail

BetaNews is reporting that UNIX developers at HBX Networks have found a bug in Gmail that, "allows access to other users' personal e-mails. By altering the "From" address field of an e-mail sent to the service, hackers could potentially find out a user's personal information, including passwords." All of the details in the story: Gmail Bug Exposes E-mails to Hackers.

Postscript (from Danny): Google says they've now fixed this, with posts from them in the story above and at Slashdot: Gmail Messages Are Vulnerable To Interception.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:32 PM | Permalink

November 22, 2004

A Conversation with Google's Georges Harik

Georges Harik, Director of Googlettes (new products) at Google, chats with the Web Talk Radio Guys about Gmail. You can read an edited transcript online or listen to the complete interview with Microsoft Media Player. You can also download and listen the program as an MP3 file.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:55 PM | Permalink

November 10, 2004

Gmail Will Add POP3 Support Soon, Antivirus Scanning Soon

According to this IDG News story Google will "gradually" begin to offer POP3 support for Gmail users. Look for it in the "coming weeks."

The article also mentions that antivirus scanning and other features are in the works.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2004

Gmail Alerts via an ATOM Feed

Several stories out there today like this one: Gmail Atom Feed Coming? that discuss a new button that's now appearing on Gmail and how it might signal a new feature that will push new email alerts (subject line, the e-mail address of the sender and a brief summary of the e-mail message) to an aggregator using ATOM.

See Also: Gmail Adds Atom Feeds (via Micro Persuasion)

Posted by Gary Price at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

Gmail Paid Listings Go Below

Google Moves Gmail Ads Source: DMnews

>From the article, "Gmail, which is still in testing, now carries an ad unit with advertiser links underneath messages instead of on the right side. The sent-message page now contains ads, too. Previously, Gmail showed ad links only on the side of incoming e-mail messages. The ads and related pages are now displayed in a light-blue shaded box, while previously they were carried against a white background."

Posted by Gary Price at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

Gmail Hacks

Google's Gmail inspires imaginative 'hacks' Source: New Scientist >From the article, "...Gmail's copious storage space has inspired a number of programmers to come up with completely novel ways of using the service. These include a "weblog" or online message board that uses Gmail to store postings and a desktop file system that plugs straight into the Gmail system."

And speaking of desktop file systems, Lycos UK announced last week that they're about to launch a "virtual desktop" allowing users to "drag and drop" and store any type of file with the 1GB of space that Lycos UK offers for about 3.50 pounds/month.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Gmail Invites as Phishing Bait

Scammers use Gmail invite as phishing hook Source: News.com

Looks like some scam artists are using the allure of Gmail as bait in a phishing scheme.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

 

• Send us feedback
|
• Technical questions or bug reports?
|
• Newsletter problems?
|
• Receive news via SEW RSS feeds

• Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. 2009 All rights reserved.
| Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions |
• Privacy Policy
|
• Affiliates

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>

• Send us feedback
|
• Technical questions or bug reports?
|
• Newsletter problems?
|
• Receive news via SEW RSS feeds

• Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. 2009 All rights reserved.
| Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions |
• Privacy Policy |
• Affiliates