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Posted by Elliot Schrage, Vice
President of Global Communications and Public Affairs

Over the years, we've built tools and offered resources to help
kids and families stay safe online. Our href="http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=preferences&hl=en"
>SafeSearch feature, for
example, helps filter explicit content from search results.

We've also been involved in a variety of local initiatives to
educate families about how to stay safe while surfing the web. Here
are a few highlights:

• In the U.S., we've worked with href="http://www.commonsensemedia.org/"
  >Common Sense Media to promote awareness about
  online safety and have donated hardware and software to improve the
  ability of the >National Center for Missing and
  Exploited Children to combat child exploitation.
  • Google UK has collaborated with child safety
    organizations such as href="http://youtube.com/user/Beatbullying"
    >Beatbullying and href="http://www.childnet.com/kia"
    >Childnet to raise awareness about cyberbullying
    and share prevention messages, and with law enforcement
    authorities, including the href="http://www.ceop.gov.uk/"

    >Child Exploitation and Online Protection
    Centre, to fight online exploitation.

    • Google India initiated "Be NetSmart," an
      Internet safety campaign created in cooperation with local law
      enforcement authorities that aims to educate students, parents, and
      teachers across the country about the great value the Internet can
      bring to their lives, while also teaching best practices for safe
      surfing.
      • Google France launched child safety education
        initiatives including href="http://www.tousconnectes.com/"
        >Tour de France
        des Collèges and >Cherche Net that are
        designed to teach kids how to use the Internet responsibly.
        • And Google Germany worked with the national
          government, industry representatives, and a number of local
          organizations recently to launch a href="http://www.fragfinn.de/"
          >search engine for children.

          As part of these ongoing efforts to provide online safety resources
          for parents and kids, we've created

          href="http://www.google.com/familysafety" >Tips for
          Online Safety, a site designed to help families find quick
          links to safety tools like SafeSearch, as well as new resources,
          like a video offering online safety pointers that we've
          developed in partnership with Common Sense Media. In the href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=kUyQI0USNSY"
          id="d.sk" >video, Anne Zehren, president of Common Sense, offers
          easy-to-implement tips, like how to set privacy and sharing
          controls on social networking sites and the importance of having
          reasonable rules for Internet use at home with appropriate levels
          of supervision.

          Users can also download our new href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/google_family_safety_guide.pdf" >
          Online Family Safety Guide (PDF), which includes useful Internet
          Safety pointers for parents, or check out a quick

          href="http://kids.getnetwise.org/tools/searchsafe/google-search"
          >tutorial on SafeSearch created by one of our
          partner organizations, GetNetWise.

          We all have roles to play in keeping kids safe online. Parents need
          to be involved with their kids' online lives and teach them how
          to make smart decisions. And Internet companies like Google need to
          continue to empower parents and kids with tools and resources that
          help put them in control of their online experiences and make web
          surfing safer.

          Tags: , Communications, Elliot, Global, Posted, President, Schrage, Vice

Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice
President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal
Officer

Earlier today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) href="http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/20071220_doubleclick.html"
id="g78_" >cleared
our acquisition of DoubleClick. This is obviously excellent
news for both companies, and I would like to comment on its
significance and what it means for us going forward.

Perhaps most importantly, the FTC’s decision publicly affirms what
we and numerous independent analysts href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-senate-testimony-on-online.html"
id="sl3h" >have been saying for
months: our acquisition does not threaten competition in what is a
robust, innovative, and quickly evolving online advertising space.
In fact, we firmly believe the transaction will increase
competition and bring substantial benefits to consumers, web
publishers, and online advertisers.

Looking at the FTC's href="http://ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/googledc.shtm" id="y_2g"
>clearance statement, a few key points
jump out as noteworthy:

Transaction was cleared with no conditions. The FTC
cleared the acquisition unconditionally, without demanding any
changes in or commitments concerning the companies’ business
practices. This will allow us to remain flexible as we continue to
innovate and provide the best services to our customers and
users.

Google and DoubleClick are not competitors. The FTC
stated that its "thorough analysis of the evidence showed that
the companies are not direct competitors in any relevant antitrust
market." Furthermore, the FTC concluded that the merger would
not eliminate beneficial potential competition, writing that
"it is unlikely that the elimination of Google as a potential
competitor in the third party ad serving markets would have a
significant impact on competition." We agree with both of
these findings. Google and DoubleClick provide complementary
services, and competition between the companies was not necessary
to create benefits for consumers. To the contrary, consumers will
benefit from the two companies working together and combining our
resources.

Third party ad serving markets are highly competitive.
The FTC noted that "the evidence shows that the third party ad
serving markets are competitive," and said that "the
evidence also shows that firms can and do switch ad serving firms
when it is in their self-interest to do so." This is an
important finding, because it means that ad serving customers will
continue to benefit from innovation and product development by the
many players in this space, and that they can always select the ad
serving provider that offers them the best services.

Privacy not a part of the merger review. Though we
strongly believe in protecting our users' privacy, the FTC
clearance decision reaffirmed the law by
noting that privacy concerns played no role
in its merger review. This is an important principle, as
privacy issues need to be addressed on an industry-wide basis, and
not on a company-by-company basis. The FTC wrote, "although
such issues may present important policy questions for the Nation,
the sole purpose of federal antitrust review of mergers and
acquisitions is to identify and remedy transactions that harm
competition. Not only does the Commission lack legal authority to
require conditions to this merger that do not relate to antitrust,
regulating the privacy requirements of just one company could
itself pose a serious detriment to competition in this vast and
rapidly evolving industry." The FTC also noted, however,
"that the evidence does not support a conclusion" that
this particular transaction will harm consumer privacy.

Data combination wouldn't pose problems. The FTC
rejected the suggestion from competitors that Google would combine
user information with DoubleClick's customers' data to
obtain an advantage in the market, writing that the data is owned
by DoubleClick’s customers and that "at bottom, the concerns
raised by Google’s competitors regarding the integration of these
two data sets — should privacy concerns not prevent such
integration — really amount to a fear that the transaction will
lead to Google offering a superior product to its customers."
Moreover, "a number of Google’s competitors have at their
disposal valuable stores of data not available to Google. For
instance, Google’s most significant competitors in the ad
intermediation market, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Time Warner have
access to their own unique data stores."

Advertisers and publishers aren't concerned. The FTC
noted that "the clear majority of third parties expressing
[competitive] concerns [about the deal] were Google’s current or
potential competitors." Additionally, Commissioner Jon
Liebowitz noted in his href="http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/0710170/071220leib.pdf" id="wp4."
>concurring opinion that "my
staff and I independently spoke with publishers and advertisers
potentially affected by this deal and, somewhat surprisingly, they
raised few anticompetitive concerns. In fact, many seem unruffled
by the alternatives in the post-merger market." It is telling
that while our competitors tried hard to come up with theories of
how our customers and partners could be harmed by the deal, those
customers and partners themselves did not agree with those
theories. In fact, we know that many of these advertisers and
publishers are excited about the transaction and look forward to
benefiting from it.

But as I said at the outset, perhaps the most important aspect of
the clearance decision is its recognition of the fact that both
Google and DoubleClick do business in a competitive and rapidly
evolving arena. Indeed, as the FTC noted, all of the recent
acquisitions that have occurred in the online advertising space
have confirmed this. "The entry and expansion
of…well-financed competitors has transformed the ad
intermediation marketplace over the last six months," the FTC
wrote. "All of these firms are vertically integrated, and all
appear to be well-positioned to compete vigorously against Google
in this new marketplace."

I should also note that, separate from its clearance decision, the
FTC this morning released some suggested href="http://ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/principles.shtm" id="b0_:"
>principles to guide online companies
engaging in online advertising. We support the FTC's effort to
develop industry-wide standards in this area, and we are studying
these proposals carefully.

Receiving clearance from the FTC is of course an important step
forward, but it does not mean that we can now close the
acquisition. For that, we must also receive clearance from European
Commission (EC), which is still conducting its review. We are
cooperating fully with the EC and are hopeful that they will soon
reach the same conclusion as their U.S. counterparts.

Tags: , Corporate, David, Drummond, Posted, President, Senior, Vice

Posted by Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior
Vice President, Operations

Climate change continues to be one of the biggest, most challenging
problems our planet faces, and we know that a sustained global
effort is needed if we're going to have any hope of reversing
its effects. In that spirit, today we're announcing that Google
will become carbon neutral by the end of 2007. This is an important
step in our long-term pursuit of holistic environmental
solutions.

Our plan to neutralize Google's carbon footprint includes three
basic strategies:
- reduce energy consumption by maximizing efficiency;
- invest in and use renewable energy sources; and
- purchase carbon offsets for the emissions that we can't
reduce directly.

To calculate our carbon footprint, we took into account emissions
from purchased electricity, employee commuting, business travel,
construction, and server manufacturing. In a partnership with the
href="http://www.ert.net/" >Environmental Resources Trust (ERT),
we have independently verified this assessment, and will do so
every year.

In order to meet our short-term goal of carbon neutrality, we have
decided to purchase some carbon offsets. To be clear, we see carbon
offsets not as a permanent solution but rather as a temporary tool
which allows us to take full responsibility for our impact right
away. By investing in projects elsewhere in the world that cut the
overall amount of greenhouse gases, we can help reduce climate
impact now while we develop more sustainable strategies for the
future. When considering an offset project, we carefully examine
the project's environmental integrity, its ability to be
monitored and verified, and the impact that our investment will
have in furthering that project's goals. In other words, we
want to make sure that our offset funding directly enables the
project, and that the carbon savings of the project are real.

As you may have read, Google already has several other
environmental programs and initiatives in place. Last week

href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/climate-savers-computing-initiative.html" >
we announced the href="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/"
>
Climate Savers Computing initiative to greatly improve
computing energy-efficiency standards. (Make sure your next
computer purchase is a compliant PC!) Transportation is another
major area of focus. Our employee shuttle system provides a commute
for more than 1,500 Googlers daily around the San Francisco Bay
area, and several hundred more have also taken advantage of our
rebate when they bought a fuel-efficient vehicle.

We're equally committed to finding and developing new green
technologies and sources of energy. We href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/clean-energy-update.html" >
just completed our solar panel installation in Mountain View,
the single-largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. to
date. We've also joined the World Resources Institute's

href="http://www.thegreenpowergroup.org/" >Green Power Market
Development Group, so we can work with other companies to make
more green power available to everyone. And of course href="http://google.org/" >Google.org
is working on creative new initiatives, including

href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/rechargeit_20070618.html" >
plug-in hybrid cars. In addition, we've set ourselves the
ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation
capacity–enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes–by 2012.

Still, we're only one company, so aside from improving our own
practices, we want to do more to raise awareness and commitment
worldwide. We feel we can best do this through our products and
services, which reach millions of people every day. For example, href="http://www.google.com/transit" >Google
Transit makes it easier than ever to find and use public
transportation around the globe. New custom tabs on iGoogle bring
climate news, href="http://www.google.com/ig/gmcreator?moduleurl=gm_youtube.xml" >energy-related
talks on video from our @Google series and other
environment-related content to your homepage. Google Maps users
have created mashups to show href="http://flood.firetree.net/" >possible coastal flooding if
the sea level changes, or to map href="http://www.climate-charts.com/climate-map.html" >climate data
for cities worldwide. And we're urging lawmakers to create
clear public policies on important issues like energy-efficiency
standards, increased funding for public research and development of
energy technologies, and regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions.

To learn more, visit our href="http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/" >new site on
energy initiatives, which details much of this work to date.

Tags: , Hoelzle, Posted, President, Senior, Urs, Vice

Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President
& General Manager, Google Enterprise

We launched Google Apps so
that it would be easier for employees to communicate and share
information while reducing the hassles and costs associated with
enterprise software. Companies are responding: every day, more than
1,000 small businesses sign up for Google Apps.

Larger enterprises, however, face a challenge: though they want to
deliver simple, useful hosted applications to their employees,
they're also required to support complex business rules,
information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate
compliance issues. In effect, many businesses use legacy systems
not because they are the best for their users, but because they are
able to support complex business rules. This isn't a tradeoff
that any business should have to make.

We realized that we needed a more complete way to address these
information security and compliance issues in order to better
support the enterprise community. That's why we're excited
to share the news that we've agreed to acquire href="http://www.postini.com/index.php" >Postini, a company that
offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM,
and other web-based communications. Like Google Apps, Postini's
services are entirely hosted, eliminating the need to install any
hardware or software. A leader in its field, Postini serves more
than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users, and was one of our
first partners for Google Apps. Their email and IM management
services include inbound and outbound policy management, spam and
virus protection, content filtering, message archiving, encryption,
and more. We will continue to support Postini's customers and
we look forward to the possibilities ahead.

Here's the href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/postini_20070709.html" >
press release announcing the deal, and there's more detail
in our href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/postini_faq.pdf" >FAQ
and on the href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2007/07/secure-innovation-postini-joins-google.html" >
Enterprise blog. height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Dave, General, Girouard, manager, Posted, President, Vice

Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President
& General Manager, Google Enterprise

As of today, Postini
becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, and we couldn’t be
happier about it. (Here's the href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/FINAL_Google_Postini_acquisition_FAQ.pdf" >
FAQ.) Since July 9, when we announced the href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/postini_20070709.html" >
agreement to acquire Postini, plenty of businesses have told us
how much they respect Postini and how the acquisition makes sense
for customers of both companies.

We view this as welcome news, but also a sign of things to come.
With the more than 100,000 businesses on href="http://www.google.com/a/" >Google Apps, 35,000 businesses
and more than 10 million users of Postini products, we see great
potential on both sides. We're committed to continue to deliver
the type of innovative and useful business products our customers
have come to expect. And we plan to announce even more product
offerings in the very near future.

Separately, both companies shared a vision for what the world of
hosted applications can become for businesses of all sizes.
Together, we look forward to achieving it. height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Dave, General, Girouard, manager, Posted, President, Vice

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice
President, Product Management

Today we learned that the Authors Guild filed a lawsuit to try to
stop Google Print. We regret
that this group chose to sue us over a program that will make
millions of books more discoverable to the world — especially
since any copyright holder can href="http://print.google.com/googleprint/publisher_library.html#options3" >
exclude their books from the program. What’s more, many of
Google Print’s chief beneficiaries will be authors whose backlist,
out of print and lightly marketed new titles will be suggested to
countless readers who wouldn’t have found them otherwise.

Let's be clear: Google doesn’t show even a single page to users
who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the
copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show
only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along
with basic bibliographic information and several links to online
booksellers and libraries. Here’s what an in-copyright book scanned
from a library looks like on Google Print:

onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"
href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/LibraryProject_screenshot-745613.JPG" >
alt="" border="0" />Google respects copyright. The use we make
of all the books we scan through the Library Project is fully
consistent with both the href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html" >
fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/articles.html#1.8" >
principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow
everything from href="http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1292.ZS.html" >
parodies to href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html" >
excerpts in book reviews. (Here's href="http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pdf" >an
article by one of the many legal scholars who have weighed in
on Google Print.)

Just as Google helps you find sites you might not have found any
other way by indexing the full text of web pages, Google Print,
like an electronic card catalog, indexes book content to help users
find, and perhaps buy, books. This ability to introduce millions of
users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’
books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster.

Tags: , ManagementToday, Posted, President, product, Susan, Vice, Wojcicki

Posted by Adam Bosworth, Vice
President

I gave a speech today at the 2007 American Medical Association of
Informatics (AMIA) Spring Congress. I used this opportunity to
suggest a vision of what I think consumers should expect from our
health care system over the next decade, including three core
principles of a future health care system:

Discovery - Consumers
should be able to discover the most relevant health information
possible

Action - Consumers
should have direct access to personalized services to help them get
the best and most convenient possible health support

Community - Consumers
should be able to learn from and educate those in similar health
circumstances and from their health practitioners

Here are my href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/Bosworth_AMIA_May07.pdf" >
notes from the speech, which include both an example of how
these principles could come together to improve health care and
suggestions about what core technology I believe is needed to
support them.

Tags: , Adam, Bosworth, gave, Posted, PresidentI, speech, Vice

Posted by David Drummond, General
Counsel and Vice President, Corporate Development

We've been asked recently why we're so determined to pursue
Google Print, even though it has drawn industry opposition in the
form of two lawsuits, the most recent coming today from several
members of the href="http://www.publishers.org/press/releases.cfm?PressReleaseArticleID=292" >
American Association of Publishers. The answer is that this
program, which will make millions of books easier for everyone in
the world to find, is crucial to our company's mission.
We're dedicated to helping the world find information, and
there's too much information in books that cannot yet be found
online. We think you should be able to search through every word of
every book ever written, and come away with a list of relevant
books to buy or find at your local library. We aim to make that
happen, but to do so we'll need to build and maintain an index
containing all this information.

It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous,
even though they can easily remove their books from the program at
any time. The history of technology is replete with advances that
first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally
were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along. In 1982,
for instance, the president of the Motion Picture Association of
America famously told a Congressional panel that "the VCR is
to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston
Strangler is to the woman home alone." But Sony, makers of the
original Betamax, stood its ground, the Supreme Court ruled that
copying a TV show to watch it later was href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=464&invol=417" >
legal, and today videotapes and DVDs produce the lion's
share of the film industry's revenue.

We expect Google Print will follow a similar storyline. We believe
that our product is legal (see href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/point-of-google-print.html" >
Eric Schmidt's recent op-ed), that the courts will
vindicate this position, and that the industry will come to embrace
Google Print's considerable benefits. Even today, despite its
lawsuit, the AAP itself recognizes this potential. The Google Print
Library Program, AAP president Pat Schroeder said this morning,
"could help many authors get more exposure and maybe even sell
more books.” We look forward to the day that the program's
opponents marvel at the fact that they actually tried to stop an
innovation that, by making books as easy to find as web pages,
brought their works to the attention of a vast new global audience.

Tags: , Counsel, David, Drummond, General, Posted, President, Vice