Google

BERKELEY, Calif.-- Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google's geography software, on Tuesday counted Google Earth as fifth among the most populous nations, by a measure of how many people have installed the mapping application that lets people see their house from space.

More than 200 million people have downloaded Google Earth, according to Jones, who spoke here at the Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth. That's just under the population of Indonesia at roughly 233 million and the United States at just more than 301 million. Brazil's population falls short of Google Earth users with … Read more

In reality, Google co-founder Larry Page just wanted to finish his doctorate, said Luis Mejia, a senior associate in the Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University.

Mejia, who was working behind the desk one day in the mid-1990s when Page came in, said Page wanted Mejia's office to license the PageRank invention and get some royalties while he went back to his academic work.

Unfortunately, licensing proved difficult. Only one search engine company made an offer, and it was more of a token offer. "They (Page and fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin) got frustrated so they decided … Read more

Google Maps' new Street View feature might be getting all the buzz these days (Hello, kitty) but that's not the only thing that's new with the popular online map application. On Monday, Google announced that Google Maps now has improved information about public transportation in many cities worldwide.

Subway stops, in addition to building outlines and car traffic data, first appeared on Google Maps in February. Now, the subway and train stops provide additional information: which lines are serviced by a particular station, a link to the Web site for the corresponding transportation company, as well as upcoming … Read more

Salesforce.com and Google are expected to launch a combined Web site on Tuesday that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords.

For Salesforce.com, the alliance expands its efforts to tie its hosted CRM software with Google AdWords, following its acquisition of privately held Kieden last year. Salesforce.com will expand beyond allowing its customers to launch Google AdWords from a Salesforce.com application to one in which it will act as a reseller of the Google AdWords platform.

The two companies jointly developed Salesforce Group … Read more

So, to further demonstrate that the world cannot get enough of Google's Street View feature--or at least to demonstrate that I can't move on--I'd like to invite our readers to participate one more time in a gallery, this time by sending in any Street View images that can demonstrate, without question, when the image was taken.

Last week, I asked for your favorite Street View images, and dozens of you responded.

The result? Here.

So, while there could be many ways to prove when an image was taken, some might be a newspaper front page that's … Read more

What do you get when you mash up the latest, greatest Google feature with an unconference full of hackers?

I'm tempted to say pure magic, but instead I'll say you get Hacking Google Street View, the report from WhereCamp that I found on my favorite blog, Waxy.org, Monday.

So what is it? It's hackers playing with the Street View APIs, figuring out ways to do things like mash up Grand Theft Auto with the hot new mapping phenomenon.

"Greg Sadetsky cracked Street View a couple hours after the announcement at Where 2.0," the … Read more

One of the four terror suspects in an alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks and a gas pipeline at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport recommended Google Earth as a way to obtain detailed aerial photographs, according to a court complaint obtained by The Smoking Gun.

The "JFK plot" made headlines on Saturday when U.S. officials announced that they had charged four men, one of whom remains at large, in a nascent plot to target fuel tanks and a gas pipeline at the high-traffic airport. The court document in question describes a May … Read more

As expected Google has acquired RSS management firm FeedBurner , the companies announced on Friday. No details of the deal were disclosed. The move means Google advertisers will have another, new avenue for their marketing and FeedBurner 's more than 430,000 publishers will be able to join the Google AdSense publisher network, Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in a conference call. Chicago-based FeedBurner was founded in 2003 and has raised about $10 million in venture capital funding. The site allows blog owners to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.

As it awaits the green light from federal antitrust regulators, Google disclosed this week in a government filing that it is putting new lobbying muscle, including a former high-ranking Justice Department antitrust lawyer, behind its proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad-tech company DoubleClick.

According to documents dated Thursday, the company has brought on four attorneys from the Washington D.C. branch of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt & Farber, including Makan Delrahim, who was appointed deputy assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division in July 2003 and shifted to private practice about … Read more