Congratulations to our U.S. and Canadian Anita Borg Scholars

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 @ 10:04 pm

Posted by Jordan Bookey, Diversity
Programs Manager

In 2003 we established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship to honor
the work of href="http://anitaborg.org/about/history/anita-borg/" >Dr. Anita
Borg, a computer scientist who dedicated her professional
career to increasing the participation of women and other
under-represented minorities in the field of technology. In her
memory, we're pleased to announce the fifth class of Anita Borg
Scholars in the U.S., and our first class of scholars in
Canada.

The U.S. program awards $10,000 academic scholarships to 23
outstanding female leaders in technology, and $1,000 scholarships
to 32 finalists. In Canada, 4 women will receive $5,000 scholarship
awards, and 13 finalists will receive $1,000 scholarships. These
undergraduate and graduate women are completing degrees in computer
science and related fields. Each of these award recipients has
demonstrated a commitment to advancing women in technology. We
congratulate these leaders on their accomplishments.

The U.S. scholars and finalists recently visited the Googleplex in
Mountain View, CA as part of the annual all-expenses-paid Google
Scholars' Retreat. Students attended technical workshops and
discussions with Google engineers and executives, and heard
first-hand about the life and work of Anita Borg from Telle
Whitney, President of the Anita
Borg Institute for Women in Technology
. The retreat enables
these scholars to meet each other and create a network of future
leaders in computer science. The 2008 recipients of the Google
United Negro College Fund Scholarship and Hispanic College Fund
Scholarship also attended.

The 17 Canada Anita Borg Scholars and Finalists will attend a
Scholars' Retreat for their inaugural class this Thursday and
Friday at our engineering office in New York.

Visit our href="http://www.google.com/jobs/scholarships"
id="p2kn" >scholarships page to learn more about our programs.
The Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is also available to female
computer science students in Europe, Australia and New
Zealand.

The 2008 U.S. Anita Borg Scholars id="ac-b20">($10,000 winners)

Allison Park Heath id="ac-b24">- Rice University, PhD Computer Science

Amy Hurst -
Carnegie Mellon University, Ph Human Computer
Interaction

Betsy Nora DiSalvo - Georgia Institute of
Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing

Diane Marie Budzik - id="ac-b36">University of California, Los Angeles, PhD Electrical
Engineering

Elizabeth Arrowsmith Bales - id="ac-b40">University of California, San Diego, PhD Computer
Science

Emily Anne Fortuna - id="ac-b44">Rice University, B.S. Computer Science

Erika Shehan Poole - id="ac-b48">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Gabriela Marcu - id="ac-b52">University of California, Irvine, B.S.
Informatics

Ghinwa Fakhri Choueiter - id="ac-b56">Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD Electrical
Engineering & Computer Science

Gina-Maria Pomann - id="ac-b60">The College of New Jersey, B.A. Math

Jennifer C. Stoll - id="ac-b64">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Jennifer Denise Tam - id="ac-b68">Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Computer
Science

Jill Patrice Dimond - id="ac-b72">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Julie Maureen Letchner
- University of Washington, PhD
Computer Science

Katherine Mary Everitt - id="ac-b80">University of Washington, PhD Computer
Science

Nancy Dougherty - id="ac-b84">Stanford University, B.S. Electrical Engineering
Raluca Ada Popa - Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, B.S. Computer Science

Sally Kadry Wahba - id="ac-b92">Clemson University, PhD Computer
Science

Sarita Ann Yardi - id="ac-b96">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Silvia Lindtner - University of California,
Irvine, PhD Information & Computer Science

Svetlana Yarosh - id="ac-b104">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Tammara Massey - id="ac-b108">University of California, Los Angeles, PhD Computer
Science

Yvon Hall Feaster - Clemson University, B.S.
Computer Information Systems

The 2008 U.S. Anita Borg Finalists id="ac-b20"> id="ac-b117">($1,000 winners)

Aditi Suhas Pendharkar - id="ac-b122">Carnegie Mellon University, M.S. Information
Networking

Alokika Dash - Univeristy of
California, Irvine, PhD Electrical Engineering & Computer
Science

Ashley Leonora
Podhradsky

Dakota State
University, PhD Information Systems

Carla Mae Webb - id="ac-b134">Western Illinois University, B.S. Computer Science
& Math

Christina Marie Williams - id="ac-b138">Colorado State University, B.S. Computer
Science

Devorah Gurwitz - id="ac-b142">Touro College, B.S. Computer Science

Eakta Jain - id="ac-b145">Carnegie Mellon University, PhD
Robotics

Elena Jocelyn Jakubiak - id="ac-b150">Tufts University, PhD Computer Science

Geeta Sharad Shroff - id="ac-b154">Carnegie Mellon University, B.S. Computer
Science

Jessica Lee Heier - Georgia
Institute of Technology, PhD Industrial & Systems
Engineering

Karen Edwards Works - id="ac-b162">Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD Computer
Science

Kathy Tran Pham - id="ac-b166">Georgia Institute of Technology, M.S.Computer
Science

Kimber Diane Lockhart - id="ac-b170">Stanford University, B.Eng. Computer
Science

Kriti Rameshlal Puniyani - id="ac-b174">Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Computer
Science

Liangrong Yi - id="ac-b178">University of Kentucky, PhD Computer
Science

Lisa Deanne Brown - id="ac-b181">Carnegie Mellon University, M.A. Entertainment
Technology

Lisa Marie White - id="ac-b186">University of Notre Dame, B.Eng. Computer
Science

Lisa Minerva Tolentino - id="ac-b190">Arizona State University, PhD Media Arts &
Computer Science

Meghan Katheleen Revelle - The College of
William and Mary, PhD Computer Science

Nahid Mahfuza Alam - id="ac-b198">Clemson University, PhD Computer
Engineering

Ramya Raghavendra - id="ac-b202">University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD Computer
Science

Rashida Zalika Davis - id="ac-b206">University of Delaware, PhD Computer & Information
Sciences

Renuka Ajay Apte - id="ac-b210">Georgia Institute of Technology, M.S. Computer
Science

Ruth Lorraine Wylie - id="ac-b214">Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Human-Computer
Interaction

Sara Gatmir Motahari - id="ac-b218">New Jersey Institute of Technology, PhD Electrical
& Computer Engineering

Sofia Jeon - id="ac-b222">Drexel University, PhD Computer
Science

Sonya Stoyanova Nikolova - id="ac-b226">Princeton University, PhD Computer
Science

Stiliyana Boycheva Stamenova - id="ac-b230">Macalester College, B.A. Math & Computer
Science

Tasneem Kaochar - id="ac-b234">University of Arizona, B.S. Computer
Science

Valerie Henderson Summet - id="ac-b238">Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered
Computing

Vibha Laljani - id="ac-b242">California Institute of Technology, B.S. Computer
Science

Yi Mao - Purdue
University, PhD Electrical & Computer
Engineering

The
2008 Canada Anita Borg Scholars ($5,000 CAD Winners)

Angelica Lim - Simon Fraser University,
BSc Computer Science

Celina Gibbs -
University of Victoria, MSc Computer Science

Christina
Boucher - University of Waterloo, PhD Computer
Science

Mireille
Gomes- Queens University, BCompH
Biomedical Computing

id="ac-b275">The 2008 Canada Anita Borg Finalists ($1,000 CAD
Winners)

Alma Juarez-Domiguez- University of
Waterloo, PhD Computer Science

April
Khademi - University of Toronto,
PhD Electrical Engineering

Carrie Demmans -
University of Saskatchewan, MSc Computer Science

Cristina Ribeiro-
University of Guelph, MSc Computer Science

Gail Carmichael- Carleton University, MSc
Computer
Science

Georgia Kastidou-
University of Waterloo, PhD Computer Science

Jocelyn Simmonds- University of Toronto, PhD
Computer Science

Katelyn Kent id="ac-b342">- University of New Brunswick, BSc Computer
Engineering

Ming Hua - Simon
Fraser University, PhD Computer Science

Pooja
Viswanathan- University of
British Columbia, PhD Computer Science

Terri Oda
- Carleton University, PhD in Computer
Science

Thuy
Vu-
University of Toronto, BSc Computer
Science

Viann
Chan- University of British Columbia, PhD
Computer Science

href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=uXEyjG" > border="0" />

height="1" width="1" />

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Why we’re buying DoubleClick

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Monday, December 10th, 2007 @ 10:21 pm

Posted by Alex Kinnier, Group Product
Manager

In April we href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/doubleclick.html"
>announced that we're buying DoubleClick,
a leading company in the ad serving business. When we made this
announcement, we gave some of our reasons. But because online
advertising is complicated, I thought I'd step back a bit and
offer some more context. If you're an expert, please bear with
me, as some of what follows will seem elementary to those already
familiar with the online advertising world. If you're not, I
hope this gives you a better understanding of how advertisers,
publishers, ad serving companies, agencies and other companies such
as Google all fit into this exciting new mix.

A little history
In the earliest years, online ads were simple banner ads on
websites. Advertisers would purchase these banner ads for those
sites their customers would likely visit. A tire company, for
example, would place banner ads on sites for automobile
enthusiasts.

An innovation followed: Text-based ads targeted at search. Type
“drip irrigation” into a search engine and up pop ads, or
“sponsored links,” to gardening service and supply companies. This
development made online advertising accessible to small advertisers
for the first time. According to a May 2007 IAB (Interactive
Advertising Bureau) study called the "

href="http://www.iab.net/resources/adrevenue/pdf/IAB_PwC_2006_Final.pdf" >
Internet Advertising Revenue Report
," text-based search
ads now account for 40 percent of online ads. Google, Yahoo! and
MSN are the leaders in managing this category of text-based ads.The
same IAB study notes that display ads account for roughly another
40 percent of online ad sales. Unlike text ads, these may
incorporate 3-D graphics, full-motion video, sound and user
interactivity. And the remaining 20 percent consists of other
categories such as email, classified and lead-generation ads.

Three portals – AOL, Yahoo! and MSN – lead the industry in display
ads. Each has more than $1 billion in annual display ad revenue.
Content sites such as CNET and ESPN.com are also in the game.
Google, however, has been a minor player in display
advertising.

Meanwhile, ad serving companies such as DoubleClick, Atlas, and
MediaPlex have been helping advertisers get their ads onto these
sites and measure how effective the ads are. Since Google has never
played in this space, acquiring DoubleClick will enable us to
complement our search and content-based advertising capabilities.
Its products and technologies will help to improve online
advertising for consumers, advertisers and publishers.

By enabling our AdSense network to work with DoubleClick’s delivery
mechanisms, for example, advertisers can obtain more precise
metrics in order to judge the effectiveness of their campaigns. The
combination of the technologies and expertise of Google and
DoubleClick will help publishers better monetize their unsold
inventory, thus helping to fuel the creation of even more rich and
diverse content on the Internet.

What ad serving is
As you might expect, ad serving is the act of serving, or
delivering, ads to websites. Google and DoubleClick play different
but complementary roles in online advertising. Google primarily
sells ads, and DoubleClick delivers (serves) ads. The relationship
between Google and DoubleClick is analogous to the relationship
between Amazon.com and Federal Express. Amazon.com makes money by
selling a book to the consumer. Federal Express makes money by
delivering it to the consumer.

For some perspective on the relative size of the ad serving
business versus the online ad sales business, some industry
estimates put the latter, globally, at about $20-30 billion.
According to various href="http://www.emarketer.com/" >eMarketer studies (available
by subscription), estimates of ad serving, on the other hand, are
many times smaller — probably 20 times smaller, or even
less.

How ad serving works
There are two types of ad-serving products: publisher and
advertiser-agency. Publishers use ad-serving products to manage how
and when the ads they have sold appear in their websites. For
example, will the ad appear on the front page of the site, or on a
subsequent page? The process of placing the ad on the appropriate
page and in the appropriate size is managed by the publisher’s ad
server.

In addition to placing ads in the right location at the right time,
ad servers report on the performance of the ads. This is an
absolutely vital function. Real-time performance reporting enables
advertisers and agencies to change the content, and timing of ads
almost on the fly. The value to the advertiser-agency of an
ad-serving company such as DoubleClick is having a single place to
measure and report on all online campaigns for ads that run on
different sites across the web.

How Google and DoubleClick differ
Google makes money primarily by selling text-based ads to
advertisers and their agencies. These are displayed on Google.com
and partner sites through our >AdSense program. We get paid when
consumers click on the ads.

DoubleClick is in the ad-serving business and has two primary
products. DART for Advertisers is an ad server that gives
advertisers/agencies the tools to plan, deliver and report on their
online ads. DART for Publishers gives publishers the tools to place
ads on their site, optimize them, and assess placement to make the
best use of their ad inventory. For the most part, DoubleClick is
paid by advertisers and publishers to serve and report on ads.
These are two vital and interrelated functions. Allowing agencies
and advertisers to deliver ads in the right context and monitor
their effectiveness maximizes the return on investment for a given
ad or campaign. Ultimately, this leads to better and more relevant
ads for the consumer.

Why we're buying DoubleClick
In summary, we're buying DoubleClick because:

    DoubleClick's products and technology are complementary to
    our search and and content-based text advertising business, and
    give us new opportunities to improve online advertising for
    consumers, advertisers and publishers.

    Historically, we've not allowed third parties to serve into
    Google's AdSense network, which has made it hard for
    advertisers to get performance metrics. Together, Google and
    DoubleClick can deliver a more open platform for advertisers, and
    provide the metrics they need to manage marketing campaigns.

    By combining Google's infrastructure with DoubleClick's
    knowledge of agencies and publishers, we can create the next
    generation of more innovative ad serving technology, one that
    significantly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of online
    advertising.

    To manage ad inventory, some of the largest publishers use
    DoubleClick DART for Publishers – but a good portion of it goes
    unsold. It's our view that the combination of DoubleClick and
    Google will help these publishers succeed by monetizing their
    unsold inventory.

We believe DoubleClick can help Google deliver better, more
relevant display ads, which improves the online experience of
consumers. From a technical perspective, Google will also be able
to get web pages to load faster by reducing latency from ad
servers. Publishers will benefit by making more money from remnant
inventory and – as has been the case with other technologies
we've acquired – we hope to make ad serving more accessible.
Smaller publishers would get access to DoubleClick's ad serving
technology, enabling them to better compete in the global
marketplace.

Advertisers and agencies will benefit, too. AdSense will support
certain ad tags so advertisers will be able to use a broader
selection of formats in our ad network, improving ad relevance. And
the experience for advertisers will be more efficient, because
there will be an ad server that provides consolidated reporting and
management of display ads on all properties and networks. More
generally, we'll be able to use our technology and record of
innovation to improve the quality of existing products in the
marketplace. We intend to invest heavily in R&D and product
development to respond to the demand from publishers, advertisers
and agencies for better tools.

In short, Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick will benefit all
parties in the online advertising business, including advertisers,
publishers, agencies and, most importantly, consumers.

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Google Desktop for the Mac in 9 more languages

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Friday, December 7th, 2007 @ 10:36 pm

Posted by Rose Yao, Mac Product
Manager

In April we href="http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-desktop-for-mac_04.html" >
launched Google Desktop for the Mac to further our goal of
delivering great products on the Mac and making them universally
available on all platforms. A big thanks to all of you for using
Desktop for the Mac, and for sharing your feedback. Today we're
tackling the second part of that "universal" goal: now
Google Desktop for the Mac is available in 9 more languages:
Chinese Simplified and Traditional, Dutch, UK English, French,
German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. There's more on this on
the Desktop for Mac
site
.

We look forward to lots more of you trying it and sending us
feedback from all over, and in different languages. We hope you
like it, and encourage you to watch for more updates from our href="http://googlemac.blogspot.com/" >Google Mac team. height="1" width="1" />

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