Google has taken a major step towards relevant social search results with the announcement of Search+ this week.

Search+ provides users with the option of ‘Personal Results’ – a unique search results page combining content from people you’re connected to on Google+ with other relevant search results from across the web.

“Just as in real life, your friends’ experiences are often so much more meaningful to you than impersonal content on the web”, Google wrote on their blog.

The company announced their ambitions for a “Google that knows you” already back in 2004.

Building onto that ambition, the move has also been said to start (finally!) to really shake things up with their age old rivalry Facebook.

While search has always been Google’s empire – so much so that it’s difficult to remember how we used to find information before – the company has repeatedly failed to transfer the success to the social side of the web.

Facebook, however, have not only claimed the social web, but with their ‘likes’ have also introduced a powerful way of finding out about relevant content from your friends.

Could Search+ finally be the move that lures some of the hundreds of millions of Facebook users to make the switch to Google+.

At the end of a film which references many of the terrible and memorable events of last year, the statement sounds like a celebration of the human spirit.

The video leaves you with a warm feeling full of pride in people’s ability to overcome obstacles – and a strong after-taste of self-congratulatory double-meaning.

Google made it. Google made the year 2011. And to think I’d been getting all emotional.

It is a thought-provoking video nevertheless – the most-shared ad this week.

Created by agency Whirled, the video has racked up 476,022 Facebook status updates, 54,529 tweets according to brandrepublic.com.

It has also been mentioned on 1,875 blog posts. Plus this one.

On the new homepage all the Google services, such as News, Maps and Gmail, are nested under the logo in a drop-down menu.

Google+ will be the only service that will maintain its own permanent icon in the new design.

“Making navigation and sharing super simple for people is a key part of our efforts to transform the overall Google experience”, Eddie Kessler, Google technical lead, said when the redesign project was announced last November.

The search giant has rolled out the new look to a limited number of users at the moment. The rest of us can preview the redesign on the video below.

Ian Carrington, Google’s head of mobile, said these brands needed to learn from businesses such as House of Fraser and Marks and Spencer.

Speaking at the IAB Mobile Engage event, he said brands which were not mobile-ready were already missing out on ‘such a big opportunity’

Carrington also commented on mobile sites which are up and running, highlighting some common failings such as sites being difficult to navigate or lacking a good strategy.

He also singled out sites for positive reasons including eBay, Amazon, Paddy Power and Marks and Spencer.

The way technology is going, Google’s April fools’ spoof may not actually have been an obvious fake to those immersed in the digital industry.

In a world of constant updates, some are getting suspicious we are just generating new technology for the sake of it.

That’s probably why the joke worked so well.

Gmail Motion – a spoof replacement for the mouse and keyboard which involves the user acting out words and phrases in front of their computer screen to write an email – was just the sort of nonsensical advancement we have come to expect.

Well done Google for pointing fun at the industry even if the industry itself could do with a dose of that same self-awareness for the remaining 364 days of the year.

Web developer Gary Robson says that the BBC provides a great example of what can be achieved when the owner of the site views accessibility as a basic requirement, not an inconvenient optional extra.

In addition to making sure all of their content is usable by the widest possible range of people, the broadcaster has also dedicated a separate site to provide accessibility help for its users.

‘My Web My Way’ offers guidance on how to set up your computer and browser in order to make the web easier to use. It also has an accessibility blog providing the latest developments in the field as well as case studies of people relying on assistive technology.

Work for an even more comprehensive version of the site is currently underway. According to the BBC, the new accessibility site aims to strike a balance between catering for first-time computer users and more experienced users.

Google has also been busy lately with accessibility issues. In its Experimental Labs the search giant is testing ways of making search results more accessible for everyone.

Two of their current experiments deal with minimising the use of the mouse with various keyboard shortcuts.

The ‘Accessible View’ feature also automatically magnifies the search results for easier viewing and reads the relevant information out loud if a screenreader is being used.

Feature article

Perceptions on web accessibility need changing

We talked to Gary Robson, Technical Director at Industrial Strength, a North East web design company, to find out what’s so off-putting about accessibility. Read more…

Compiled by virus and malware company Trend Micro, an annual review revealed the search giant’s homepage to be an ideal target for cybercriminals.

Google’s popularity has led the site to be used as a signpost to malware threats and dangerous ads.

Apple’s OS X was given the dubious honour of being the riskiest operating system. The company, which has been known to keep any bugs secret, has increased vulnerability patching cycles making it a prime candidate for the “award”.

The riskiest social network title went predictably to Facebook and WordPress grabbed the prize for the most dangerous website software largely thanks to its fragility if left unpatched.

Find the full list here:
http://blog.trendmicro.com/2010s-most-dangerous-list/

YouTube has announced that its users have uploaded more than 13 million hours of video content to its servers in the last 12 months, resulting in more than 700 billion YouTube video views.

If you do the math, it means that YouTube’s users have uploaded 850,000 minutes of video and watched 1.9 billion videos per day in the past year. In March, the Google-owned video site announced that its users were uploading more than 24 hours of video per minute. In May, YouTube revealed that it had surpassed 2 billion video views per day.

The company also disclosed that it now has around 15,000 partners creating millions of minutes of content. “We’re privileged to work with the most passionate and talented partners in the world, who produce and upload videos that inspire us, make us laugh and move us — and, most importantly, change the way we look at the world,” Tom Pickett, YouTube’s director of content operations and online creators, said in a blog post.

To celebrate, the video service is giving some of its most successful partners funds to help them create more original content. Five hundred top partners will receive $1,000 credits at B&H Photo in order to help them buy the equipment they need to improve their content’s quality. Some of the selected partners include Mystery Guitar Man, Shay Carl, and one of our favorites, musician Kina Grannis.

The whole point of the program is to bring more premium content to the pages of YouTube. Google is reportedly contemplating an acquisition of Next New Networks and has hired Malik Ducard, formerly a senior VP at Paramount. It’s an orchestrated effort to move away from funny cat videos to high-quality content that can be monetized.

From Mashable

Profile

Lars Rasmussen is a computer scientist and a software developer best know as the co-founder of Google Maps.

Born in Denmark, Lars has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Aarhus, an MSc in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from the University of California at Berkley.

In 2003 Rasmussen co-founded a mapping-related start-up, Where 2 Technologies, with his brother Jens and two Australians. The company was bought by Google in 2004 to create Google Maps. Quite ironically, Rasmussen has been said to have ‘possibly the world’s least developed sense of direction’.

Working for the technology giant, Lars and Jens also later co-founded Google Wave.

Rasmussen has recently left Google to join Facebook.

It’s been a busy week for Google. The most recent news confirmed the rumoured $6m deal with a fast-growing voucher website Groupon is off, but the search giant has kept itself busy with other plans and acquisitions.

Earlier this week, Google caused a few grey hairs for the executives at Amazon by announcing the launch of its own eReader platform ‘Editions’.

According to The Telegraph’s consumer technology editor Matt Warman, Google Editions is a natural move from making books easily discoverable with Google Book Search, to providing a platform of buying them.

Acquisitions

In addition, Google is exploring artificial speech with its latest acquisition of Phonetic Arts, a UK company working on making computer speech more human.

Currently being used in video games, Google is hoping to use the technology in some of its products such as Google Translate, reading translations out loud, and Google Maps, providing turn-by-turn navigation in the mobile version.

New features

In an attempt to make YouTube videos more appealing to the masses Google has unveiled personalised YouTube channels.

The new feature allows users to create a video stream based on chosen keywords and their viewing history. Similar to cloud-based music streaming services such as Pandora, the idea is that the channel will become better the more you use it.

Legal trouble

Last week, Google also hit the news in less flattering circumstances.

The European Commission has decided to launch an investigation into allegations of the search giant abusing its dominance in the search market.

Three small search companies, including British price comparison site Foundem, have filed complaints earlier this year that Google has deliberately dropped their rankings in the search results.

Google has denied all the allegations but has said in a statement that there’s always “room for improvement” and they’re “willing to work with the Commission to address any concerns”.