Google Currents goes international

In December we launched Google Currents, an app for Android and iOS devices that lets you explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger. We’re thrilled by how many readers and publishers are using the app in the U.S.—nearly 400 publisher editions and over 14,000 self-produced editions are now available.



After the U.S. launch, the top features readers requested were to make the app available internationally and to allow content to sync quickly. We’ve heard you, and today we’re making Google Currents 1.1 available around the world. Hundreds of U.S. editions are now readable in your preferred language with a new publisher-selected translation feature, and local publishers can begin adding their content to the catalog through Google Currents Producer. Plus, a new dynamic sync feature improves your reading experience with fresh content wherever you are.



Whatever you’re interested in—whether it’s science (Popular Science, Scientific American, Space.com), sports (Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Surfer), business (Harvard Business Review, Inc.), celebrities (Celebuzz, HollywoodLife, Now magazine, TMZ), health & wellness (Men’s Health, Yoga Journal), design (Colossal, Dwell) or news (The Atlantic, PRI, Slate)—it’s easy to find a great edition to read in Google Currents.



Read in more places

With this update, we’ve made Google Currents available globally, wherever apps are available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. International publishers, using Google Currents Producer, can now begin adding local content for an international audience, choosing where to make it available globally and whether to enable auto-translation. For example The Guardian in the UK, LaStampa in Italy, Financial Times Deutschland in Germany, ABC News in Australia, Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Switzerland and Hindustan Times in India have already started publishing editions with local content. Readers can also add their favorite local blogs which are instantly converted into Currents editions.







Read in your favorite language

To help you enjoy content in your preferred language, we’ve integrated Google Translate into Google Currents. Just press the globe icon while reading an edition, and you can automatically translate that edition to one of 38 supported languages. So it’s easier than ever to keep up with Italian and German sports (Corriere dello Sport, kicker.de), or read Scientific American, in your preferred language.








Read fresh content, automatically

With our new dynamic sync feature, you’ll always have fresh content to read. As you open each edition, new content is dynamically delivered, using a minimum of your phone or tablet's battery, bandwidth and storage. Those of you who travel on planes and trains can choose which editions you would like fully packaged for offline reading, including images.



Learn more about what’s new in Currents here.



Google Currents is now available for download on Google Play and in the Apple App Store, wherever apps are available. Whether you’re a reader or a publisher, we hope that Google Currents helps you easily experience the best content on the web, now in even more languages.



Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager

A Universal Language for Video Ads

[Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Publisher blog]

Like many New Yorkers, I can’t imagine life in this city without the subway - it’s essential to how the city operates, creates millions in economic value, and even features great mariachi bands. But the subway wasn’t always this efficient. In the early 1900s, there were multiple subway systems, with different size train cars, running on different track configurations - even one propelled by air! Today, after the unification of these subway systems, everything works seamlessly together.

So what does the subway system have to do with video advertising? Well, the two dominant video advertising guidelines -- VAST and VPAID -- are like the unified transportation system for video advertising. VAST and VPAID define a common language that unifies the diversity of the video advertising industry: Flash and HTML video players, ad networks and exchanges, mobile devices and connected TVs, 30 second spots and interactive overlays.

At Google, we’ve been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We’re happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB’s Digital Video Marketplace Event today. This means that we’ll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios.

What benefits can you expect from VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0?

• If you’re a publisher, interoperability will improve and you’ll be able to accept a wider set of video ad formats with less technical work. The new error codes will also help with troubleshooting of third party served ads.
  
  
• If you’re an advertiser, the Video Suite allows you to create more engaging brand stories that reach a wider audience across all devices. You’ll be able to take greater advantage of skippable ads, which offer new pricing models focused on performance.
  
  
• If you’re a vendor, the technical details of these specs really matter, and we’ve provided much more clarity around the compliance requirements for video players and ad servers.

So much has changed in the online video space in just ten years, that we thought we’d take a trip down memory line with this infographic:

Click through for the full infographic

As an industry, we’ve started to take VAST and VPAID for granted, much like New Yorkers and their subway system. That’s a good thing, because it means they’ve become an essential part of powering our economy.

Posted by Payam Shodjai, Product Manager, Video Monetization

A Universal Language for Video Ads

Like many New Yorkers, I can’t imagine life in this city without the subway - it’s essential to how the city operates, creates millions in economic value, and even features great mariachi bands. But the subway wasn’t always this efficient. In the early 1900s, there were multiple subway systems, with different size train cars, running on different track configurations - even one propelled by air! Today, after the unification of these subway systems, everything works seamlessly together.

So what does the subway system have to do with video advertising? Well, the two dominant video advertising guidelines -- VAST and VPAID -- are like the unified transportation system for video advertising. VAST and VPAID define a common language that unifies the diversity of the video advertising industry: Flash and HTML video players, ad networks and exchanges, mobile devices and connected TVs, 30 second spots and interactive overlays.

At Google, we’ve been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We’re happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB’s Digital Video Marketplace Event today. This means that we’ll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios.

What benefits can you expect from VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0? 

• If you’re a publisher, interoperability will improve and you’ll be able to accept a wider set of video ad formats with less technical work. The new error codes will also help with troubleshooting of third party served ads.


• If you’re an advertiser, the Video Suite allows you to create more engaging brand stories that reach a wider audience across all devices. You’ll be able to take greater advantage of skippable ads, which offer new pricing models focused on performance.


• If you’re a vendor, the technical details of these specs really matter, and we’ve provided much more clarity around the compliance requirements for video players and ad servers.

So much has changed in the online video space in just ten years, that we thought we’d take a trip down memory line with this infographic:

Click through for the full infographic

As an industry, we’ve started to take VAST and VPAID for granted, much like New Yorkers and their subway system. That’s a good thing, because it means they’ve become an essential part of powering our economy.



Posted by Payam Shodjai, Product Manager, Video Monetization

Google Art Project launches with Museums in Delhi

I am very excited to announce the launch of Google Art Project in India. This launch allows users across the world to view artwork collection supported by 2 museums in New Delhi - National Gallery of Modern Art and National Museum, from the comfort of their homes at www.googleartproject.com. We hope to add many more such museums in time and welcome partnerships from museums across India to participate in this program. Sign up form is here.



Globally, we have launched 151 cultural institutions in 41 countries with 30,000 artworks from 6,000 artists.



Users from anywhere can find excellent portalist from Kerala, Raja Ravi Varma’s oil paintings during the 1890s to Jamini Roy’s inspiration from tribal and folk culture that connects towns to villages. Also check out the miniatures from the early Chola Art at the National Museum - outstanding bronze image of Nataraja in chatura-tandava posture from Tiruvarangulam and cosmic dance of Lord Shiva symbolizing fivefold aspects of Divine control of the universe namely; creation, preservation, destruction, illusion and grace.



Global collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Palace of Versailles in France, the White House in Washington DC, the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar and many more. Don’t forget to check out the museum view located on the left bottom panel of the site.



The platform gives you a fun and unique way to interact with art and we hope this inspires you to visit the real thing. Users all over the world can now interact with art in a way that was never possible before - brush level strokes of paintings, virtual tour of the museums and a feature that allows you to create your own collection to share with your friends and family.

Here are a few things in the Art Project that you might enjoy:

• Using tools called Explore and Discover, you can find artworks by period, artist or type of artwork, displaying works from different museums around the world.



• Google+ and Hangouts are integrated on the site, enabling you to create engaging personal galleries.



• Street View images are displayed in finer quality. A specially designed Street View “trolley” took 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. You can also explore the gallery interiors directly from within Street View in Google Maps.



• We have 46 artworks available with our “gigapixel” photo capturing technology, photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution so you can study details of the brushwork and patina that would be impossible to see with the naked eye.



• An enhanced My Gallery feature lets you select any of the 30,000 artworks—along with your favorite details—to build your own personalized gallery. You can add comments to each painting and share the whole collection with friends and family. (It’s an ideal tool for students.)

We’re incredibly excited about this project—it’s our first step toward making great art more accessible, and we hope to add more museums and works of art in time.



Posted by Kiran Bapna, Principal New Business Development

Master/Slave Datastore, thanks for all your hard work

Almost 4 years after launch, we’ve seen fantastic growth both in Google App Engine and the apps that run on it. And although the Master/Slave Datastore was a big part of our early success, it's time to announce the deprecation of the Master/Slave Datastore in favor of the High-Replication Datastore (HRD). HRD has provided us with higher availability and better, more predictable performance. Many upcoming features will be HRD-only and we strongly encourage you to migrate all your applications as soon as possible using the migration tools found in the Application Settings tab of the Administration Console. The deprecation period will follow the guidelines set in our terms of service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at ms-datastore-deprecation@googlegroups.com.



- Posted by Max Ross, on behalf of the App Engine Datastore Team

Google Affiliate Network expanding in the UK

After testing Google Affiliate Network in beta throughout the UK, we’re excited to announce that we’re expanding to more UK advertisers and agencies. This means more relevant deals and promotions will be available to publishers with UK audiences. We’ve worked hard to enhance our international product offering and now have a team based in the Google London office actively supporting UK users.

Key benefits for UK users:

• Market-leading insights and reporting available in local timezone, language and currency


• Publisher payments available in over 40 currencies in 80 countries


• Product feed integration via Google Merchant Centre


• Ability to create accounts with different payouts, advertiser-specific terms and local market presence

• Custom recruiting for select advertisers

For UK publishers:
UK publishers can now apply for UK affiliate programmes including Blue Nile, Onlineticketexpress.com, Orvis UK, Shoes.com, Skechers and more. Follow the steps below to to get started:

1.) Log in to your account (or apply to join our network)
2.) Go to the Advertisers tab
3.) On the left-hand navigation, click ‘Countries’ and choose United Kingdom
4.) Apply to programmes

For UK advertisers:
If you’re an advertiser interested in starting an affiliate programme with Google Affiliate Network, please contact us and a member of our team can provide more information.

We look forward to helping advertisers, publishers and agencies achieve their goals in the UK, and doing our part to grow the UK affiliate market! For more information, please visit our website.

Posted by: Tony Nelan, Head of Google Affiliate Network for Europe

Two new gadgets to make your blog better with Google+

Imagine being able to share your blog with like-minded people across the web. Today we’ve made doing that easier with the introduction of two Google+ gadgets, the +1 button and Google+ Badge.

Unlike the +1 button that can appear below a post, this gadget is specific to your blog. Displaying it on your blog will allow visitors to endorse your blog and share it with their friends.  

+1 button for blog

If you’re wondering what a +1 means, think of it as a public stamp of approval from your readers. As soon as someone clicks on the +1 button next to your blog, they’ll also have the option to share it with their friends, contacts, or the rest of the web.  

+1s from your readers will appear to people in their circles whenever your blog shows up in Google search results.
Here’s an example:

We’re also introducing the Google+ badge gadget, which allows you to connect your blog to your personal profile or your Google+ page on Google+. Adding the badge to your blog helps you connect with friends, fans, and customers. It enables your readers to add you, or your blog to their circles and follow your blog posts on Google+.

If you are happy to blog under your real name, people can follow your stream on Google+. If you prefer to blog under a nickname or an established pseudonym, you can create a Google+ Page to represent your blog. Bloggers who wish to remain anonymous should continue to blog as usual.

To add these gadgets to your blog, select "Add a Gadget" from the "Layout" tab of Blogger, and select them from the list of gadgets under "Basics". You'll need to copy your Google+ ID (personal or Page) to configure the brand badge gadget for your blog.

Add the +1 and Google+ brand badge gadgets to your blog today to grow and engage your audience.

Bora Toska, Product Marketing Manager