Google Now's images are beautiful, colorful, cheerful, minimalist and futuristic at the same time. Now you can see the full-size scenes in this Flickr set. They were uploaded by Brent Couchman, who created them.

"Brent Couchman is an independent graphic designer based in sunny San Francisco, California. Originally hailing from the Lone Star State where he developed branding, packaging & illustration for Fossil, Brent moved to the Bay Area to work with Hatch design," mentions his site.




{ via Marques Brownlee and Ade Oshineye. }

Google tests a new interface for the mobile Gmail web app. The toolbar that includes buttons for archiving messages, marking as unread or adding labels now floats above the message and it no longer has a fixed position.

Here's the new interface that's currently tested (stock Android browser):


And here's the regular interface (mobile Chrome):


As you can see, the Gmail mobile site goes back to the roots. Back in 2009, Google added a similar bar to the mobile site: "We made extensive use of other browser functions too: for example, the floaty bar that lets you archive, delete or apply more actions is animated via CSS transformations and controlled in part with touch events (when you scroll the screen, it follows you)."

If there's a popular Google product that's different from any other Google products and services, it must be Android. Most Google services got the basics right and then started to add features. Before you could use image search, video search, voice search and flight search, Google started with a clean interface and relevant results that loaded quickly. I still remember that Gmail didn't have a delete button or support for drafts when it launched, but it had support for conversations, search, 1GB of free storage and a great spam filter. Back in 2008, Chrome didn't support extensions, it was Windows-only, you couldn't even preview pages before printing them, but it was fast, it had a clutter-free interface and sandboxed tabs.

Android is the odd one out because it didn't focus on the users, it focused on apps and developers. It started with great APIs for developers before building a great interface, it started with voice search before running fast, it started with live wallpapers and widgets before optimizing battery life. It's like releasing a slow and cluttered Chrome with tons of great APIs for developers or launching Google Search with a lot of advanced search operators and natural language understanding, but the results aren't relevant and you need to wait a few seconds until they're displayed.

Customization is important, APIs and third-party apps are important, but getting the basics right is the most important. The first iPhone was great, even if it didn't support third-party apps, 3G, MMS and many other things. It had an impressive user interface and a few well-built apps. Everything else was added later: third-party apps, multitasking, notification center, folders.

Android focused on APIs and third-party apps. HTC had to come up with Sense to sell some Android phones because Google's interface was just a placeholder. Other phone manufacturers created their own interfaces and system apps. A lot of innovative ideas, but not much common ground. The only things that connected all the different devices were the Android APIs. Ice Cream Sandwich changed all that: the Holo theme was mandatory, Android added support for hardware acceleration and apps started to look consistent. Then Jelly Bean and Project Butter addressed lag.

Paul Buchheit, the man behind Gmail, has a great post titled "If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good." He explains how to build new products: "What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise." That's how Gmail started. "It was fast, stored all of your email (back when 4MB quotas were the norm), and had an innovative interface based on conversations and search. The secondary and tertiary features were minimal or absent. There was no 'rich text' composer. The original address book was implemented in two days and did almost nothing."

Android focused on the wrong things initially, but still won because it was the only significant alternative to iOS, so carriers, phone manufacturers and users embraced it. Now it's hard to go back to the basics and fix them, make apps less powerful, remove APIs and focus on what matters on a mobile device: smooth experience and battery life.

Note: I use both Android and iOS. Android has improved a lot lately (even though Android 4.2 looks like a step backward) and I hope that constructive criticism will make it even better.

Remember Gmail's sponsored promotions, the feature that combined ads with email? Google found an intrusive way to display these ads in the new inbox interface: they're added to the promotions tab and look almost like regular messages. Sure, they have a different background color and there's an "ad" label, but inbox tabs should only include your messages, not ads disguised as email.



"It's a new type of ad which you can forward to a friend, or star to save it to your inbox. If you dismiss this ad, you won't see it again," informs Google. You can click "dismiss" or use the "x" icon to remove an ad. If you want to see all the sponsored promotions for your account, go to this page.


With the new inbox tabs, Gmail no longer displays web clips (which are mostly ads) above/below the messages from your inbox, so it now shows ads in the promotions tab. Web clips could be disabled from the settings, but the new ads can't be disabled. The only thing you can do is to hide the promotions tab by clicking the gears button and selecting "configure inbox". When you hide the promotions tab, Gmail will bring back the web clips ads, but these can be disabled from the settings.

I don't know why Google Play Services is an app in Google Play, but some of the reviews are great. It's hard to review a system component that adds support for new APIs, so some of the reviewers got creative.


Here are my favorite reviews:

1. "I was given a Nexus 7 by an old shaman in a yellow poncho. He told me to install this package and sacrifice a living watermelon to Utanapishti, singing the Bollywood rendition of 'Love Train' as an offering of my adulation. Upon completion, all the disease and sickness in my village was cured, and we knew no more sadness. Also, Mark Wahlberg came to visit and gave us all Nexus 7s before he returned to the 8th dimension of Kajiik Masunraht."

2. "After i installed this my screen went from 4.6 inches to 5! I say it was well worth it. But the best part was using my phones NFC as a key for my mustang. I bet it would work on a mercedes, just put it up to the steering wheel and tap it to turn the car on. Don't forget to activate your free netflix subscription!!"

3. "I got a pony, and a car, and unicorn, and a pony, and a leprechaun, and a pot of gold, and a reindeer, and a computer, and a slave, and a Santa, and a genie, and a unlimited wishes voucher, and a pony."

4. "This app has taken over my life. I'm addicted so bad that my wife took the kids and left me! Ooh well, its well worth it woooooooooo"

5. "This game is amazing, if you collect all the frogs, beat the mini game and unlock Knights of the Round once you beat Level 10, (God Mode) there is a bonus level. I beat the bonus boss and my phone suddenly started vibrating and transformed into only what I can imagine is a Samsung Galaxy S 6!"

6. "This app give me an extra Maps to Mordor! And i can take pictures of Nàzgul while in 3D Panoramic Mode. And I can control Curiosity on Mars too! Thank you Google!"

7. "Cannot recommend this enough. Seamless integration with my Atari 2600 and immersive soundtrack. Inspired!"

8. "This is without a doubt the best game on the entire play store. the graphics are beyond console quality and the storyline is better than mo's movies these days. Level 8 is quite impossible though... Anyway, props to Google for a job well done!"

9. "This service of play is the best there is. Beats Apple 5 services which don't play well with anything. Google plays well...very well. So well, they even have this nifty service. All my friends with Android devices use it too. How my life has gotten better with Google Play services ?? Well, for one thing, I don't have to think any more. Google Services reads my mind, and does stuff for me...WELL in advance of when I would have probably done it.... Sends emails, sets reminders, ANSWERS emails before they even arrive! It is so awesome... Actually, this is Google service writing this so my owner didn't have to...... I'm awesome."

10. "Reunited me with my dad 26 years after he said he was going to the store to buy milk and cigarettes."

Another app with many funny reviews is Samsung Push Service. Here's an example: "After 2 months of staring at the divorce papers, I picked up the pen preparing to flush 10 years down the drain. At that moment, the app download it. Screeching tires in my driveway and my wife came running in the house and ripped up the papers. Thank you Samsung, you saved my life."

Any other Google Play apps with funny reviews?

Google Maps shows a clever promo for Map Maker in the classic interface: "Is something missing? Edit Google Maps." It's probably an experiment, but the message always shows up when using this URL. Even without the promotional message, you'll usually see an option to "Edit in Google Map Maker" at the bottom of the map, next to the copyright message.



"Google Map Maker is a Google Maps service that allows you add or edit features, such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using Google Map Maker tools, you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about these locations," informed a Google post back in 2008, when Map Maker was launched. At that time, Map Maker was only available for 17 countries, including Cyprus, Iceland, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Bahamas and Vietnam. Google continued to add new countries and the service now supports over 200 countries. "More than 40,000 people around the world are making contributions and improving Google Maps through Google Map Maker each month," announced Google in April, when the UK was added to Map Maker. OpenStreetMap has more than 1.2 million users, but less than 2% contribute to the project.

Google bombing has a new meaning, with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph. From [more evil than Satan himself] to [miserable failure], Google bombs were created by getting many web pages to link to the target homepage and use the same anchor text. For example, Microsoft haters linked to Microsoft's homepage and used this anchor text back in 1999: [more evil than Satan himself]. After a few months, Google's top result for [more evil than Satan himself] was Microsoft's homepage. Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button made Google bombs more popular, many people thinking that Google modified search results pages.

Here's a screenshot from 1999, well preserved by bedope.com:


... and the well-known political message "miserable failure" (screenshot from 2007):


Google started to use some algorithms to defuse bombs in 2007, but there are still ways to artificially inflate Google rankings for a page to show your opinion. For example, when you search for [completely wrong], Google shows pictures of Mitt Romney, the Republican Nominee for the US Presidential Election in 2012.


Knowledge Graph brings a new meaning to Google bombs. If you search for [kłamca], you'll get a Knowledge Graph box for Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland. "Kłamca" is a Polish word that means "liar". In fact, many of the top results for [kłamca] are about Donald Tusk, who is no longer popular in Poland.



Apparently, this Google bomb has been reported back in 2010 by Polish news sites. Back then, the top search result for [kłamca] was the Wikipedia page for Donald Tusk. Now Google shows an entire sidebar with information about the Prime Minister of Poland.

This reminds me of a screenshot from 2009. This time it's from Bing:


As Search Engine Land noticed, when you search for [miserable failure] using Google right now, you get an info pane about Google bombs and some disambiguation links for George W. Bush and political Google bombs.


{ Thanks, Jerzy. }

It took awhile, but Google's unified storage is finally here for almost everyone (some people got the new feature earlier, it was gradually rolled out). As previously mentioned, the 25GB plan is no longer available and the most affordable plan offers 100GB for $4.99/month.

You get 15GB of free storage for Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos and you can buy additional storage (100GB, 200GB, 400GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, 16TB). Until now, the storage was only shared between Google Drive and Google+ Photos and you got 15GB of bonus storage for Gmail. Now the entire storage is shared between Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos.



Here's what happens after upgrading to the 100GB plan:


You'll get this message: "Thanks for purchasing a Google Drive storage plan. (...) Starting today, you'll have this storage shared across Google Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. To manage this plan, visit google.com/settings/storage. Remember that with the purchase of this plan, you have priority access to phone, email, and chat support from one of our specialists. Contact us. Thanks for buying Google Drive storage, and welcome to the cloud!"


If you have an old plan, you'll see some extra storage called "early adopter bonus". As Google says, "any storage purchases, promotions, or adjustments that have been applied to your account in the past will be reflected in your amount of unified storage. In other words, your storage space will not be decreased".

There's an entertaining video that shows 2 Google employees (Mike LeBeau and Amanda Rosenberg) finding answers to various questions using Google Glass.



One of the questions is: "who sings that song where the guy goes 'How Bizarre'?" Google Glass provides the right answer (OMC) and lists a few sites that mention this answer. I asked a similar question using the mobile Google Search app and Google displayed the following message below the answer: "mentioned in results below".


It's nice to see that Google understands verbose questions. Unfortunately, Google no longer mentions the sources that provide the answer. For example, a query like [everest height] used to return an answer, followed by a list of sources.


Here's how it looks today, after the upgrade to the Knowledge Graph:


Google extracts facts from various web pages, so listing some of the sources is appropriate and helps users find reputable sources of information. If the answer is wrong or it's no longer accurate, Google can always point to the sources. As Wikipedia says, "verifiability means that people reading and editing the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source".

Google mentions that the "Knowledge Graph isn't just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It's also augmented at a much larger scale because we're focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it's tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web."

Here's an example of wrong answer: Google's answer for [hardware wars running time] is 60 minutes, even though the right answer is 13 minutes.


Another wrong answer: Hardware Wars was actually released in 1978.

Sometimes it's a good idea to look at stats and see how many people use Google's products. Here are some official stats for the most important Google services and software:

Google Search - 1 billion users (September 2010), 100 billion searches per month (August 2012)

Google Maps - 1 billion monthly active users (June 2012)

YouTube - 1 billion unique users every month (March 2013)

Android - 900 million activations (May 2013)

Chrome - 750 million active users (May 2013)

Gmail - 425 million active users (June 2012)

Blogger - 300 million monthly visitors (September 2009)

Google Translate - 200 million monthly active users on translate.google.com (April 2012)

Google+ - 190 million active users in the stream, 390 million active users across Google (May 2013)

As you can see, there are at least 3 Google services that have more than 1 billion users: Search, Maps and YouTube. The number of Android activations is higher than the number of active users, since some of the devices are no longer used and there are users that have multiple Android devices.