Announcing Google+ Hangouts

What we've been working on recently :-) From the Google Blog:

+Hangouts: stop by and say hello, face-to-face-to-face

Whether it's inside a pub or on a front porch, human beings have always enjoyed hanging out. And why not? It's how we unwind, recharge, and spend unscheduled time with old and new friends alike. Hanging out is deceptively simple though, and the nuance gets lost online.
Just think: when you walk into the pub or step onto your front porch, you're in fact signaling to everyone around, “Hey, I've got some time, so feel free to stop by." Further, it’s this unspoken understanding that puts people at ease, and encourages conversation. But today’s online communication tools (like instant messaging and video-calling) don’t understand this subtlety:

• They’re annoying, for starters. You can ping everyone that’s “available,” but you’re bound to interrupt someone’s plans.

• They’re also really awkward. When someone doesn't respond, you don't know if they’re just not there, or just not interested.

With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you're free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face:

To support Hangouts, we built an all-new standards-based cloud video conferencing platform. This platform combines high quality, low latency, and strong security with the ease of use of a web application. Through the efficiency of this new platform, we're able to deliver a leading video conferencing experience at Google scale.

A few noteworthy technical points:

• Fully browser-based/cloud-based
• Client-server: leverages the power of Google's infrastructure
• Designed for low latency (< 100 ms) and high performance (multicore + hardware acceleration)
• Standards-based: XMPP, Jingle, RTP, ICE, STUN, SRTP
• Fully encrypted (HTTPS + SRTP)

Check it out at https://plus.google.com/up/start/?sw=1&type=st!

Hangin' with Vint Cerf

Turned 36 today. No Hulk Hogan visit like my last birthday, but I did get to meet Vint Cerf (the true father of the Internet) the other day. Really a nice guy, and gives our team lots of feedback on our products, especially about our use of Internet standards. Glad to have him here at Google!

CNET TV: Google Voice vs. Skype Prizefight

For some reason, they don't even mention Google video chat, but I'm still happy with the result :-)

Google Seattle Tech Talk Event - Video Chat and Chrome Video

I'll be giving a talk on Google video chat Wednesday at Google's Seattle office. Andrew Scherkus will also be talking about the implementation of the HTML5 video tag in Chrome. Short writeups:

Google Voice and Video Chat by Justin Uberti

How does video chat really work? The basic concepts are simple, but in the real world there are a number of things that make life much more complicated. Learn how all the pieces fit together in this deep dive into Google video chat.

Justin Uberti is currently Tech Lead for Real-Time Communications at Google, where he led the effort to create Google video chat. Prior to joining Google in 2006, Justin served as the chief architect for AOL Instant Messenger, including the development of AIM's voice and video chat.

Google Chrome HTML5 Video by Andrew Scherkus

How exactly do you get video playback working in a multi-process, cross-platform, sandboxed browser? Find out what worked, what didn't and what it's like to work on open source projects at Google in this retrospective on implementing HTML5 Video in Google Chrome.

Andrew Scherkus is currently a Software Engineer at Google Kirkland. Since joining Google in 2008 he's been busy leading development on Google Chrome's HTML5 audio/video implementation. Prior to that Andrew was finishing up his bachelor of Software Engineering from the University of Waterloo and working as an intern for ATI and Google.

For more info, see our Seattle Tech Talk Page.

More Kirkland Grand Opening Coverage

From the Seattle P-I's Microsoft Blog(!): Google Invests in Kirkland with new campus

With about 600 Seattle-area employees, Google's influence in the region pales in comparison to Microsoft's. But the Internet giant, whose friendly image has won over millions and millions of worldwide Web users, may have the chance to start small – with Kirkland.

"Google is a very, very important part of our high-tech sector," [Kirkland mayor Jim Lauinger] said. "The high-tech sector is growing rapidly in Kirkland. It's taking a breather right now, but it's going to grow."

From Xconomy Seattle:

Google Kirkland Is Hiring, and Other Highlights from the Company’s Northwest Birthplace

Lastly, as I am wont to do, I asked [Google VP] Alan Eustace and [Google Kirkland site director] Scott Silver individually to boil down Google’s culture to one word. Neither took the bait. Eustace did say Google’s culture is quite uniform across its various centers worldwide. He used words like innovative, open to new ideas, community focused (versus competitive), happy, and high-energy, to describe the culture, but wouldn’t commit to just one of them.

Silver came closer to giving me one take-home message. “Engineers are in charge,” he said.

Other mentions:

• From Chris Pirillo's blog: Google Seattle
• From KMOX News: Google moves into new headquarters

Google Kirkland Tour

Today was the official grand opening of our new Kirkland campus. Here's a video of the event from TechFlash.com.

Google Seattle Holiday Party 2008

Photo credit: Steve Lacey

There weren't any casino tables this year, but the classic video games were back in force. Playing Tempest or the original Star Wars while dance music is pulsing is a wild ride...

1 Year at Google!

Tuesday marks a year for me at Google. Woohoo! I think that means I'm no longer a Noogler. I still can't disclose what I'm working on (although it is extra-awesome).

But my AOL non-recruit agreement has expired. Now accepting resumes!

Google expanding in Kirkland

As mentioned today in the Seattle Times, Google has signed a lease to occupy a new three-building office campus in Kirkland just down the street from our current offices. At 180,000 square feet, this will provide a lot of much-needed space as we grow our staff from the current 400+ employees to the goal of "several thousand". No word yet on whether the Kirkland campus will feature a Tyrannosaurus skeleton.

Update: Another story, with pictures, in the Seattle P-I.


View Larger Map

Google Tips and Tweaks

Saw a couple interesting blog posts recently with tips for Google web search and Gmail.

From Marc and Angel: 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing

My favorite tip is #1, using Google Image search to search for faces. Try it!

From Trendplex: Top 10 Gmail Tweaks

Here I like the Gmail conversation preview plugin - right click on a conversation to quickly view the conversation in a popup, as shown here.

Google NYC

Just got back from 3 weeks on the East Coast. After 8 months in Seattle, I had completely forgotten what hot & humid feels like! (For those unfamiliar with East Coast summers: like walking through a warm marshmallow.)

I spent a week of that time at the Google office in New York City. It's an incredible facility - the building takes up an entire Manhattan city block, and the view from the cafeteria on the 8th floor is truly remarkable.

The culture is definitely different than either the Kirkland or Mountain View offices - still Googley, but with much more of an urban feel. If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more about Google NYC here.

Matt Cutts on "Not trapping users' data"

Matt Cutts had a great post the other day about how Google is making good on Eric Schmidt's promise to not trap user data. Eric had spoken out at last year's Web 2.0 conference against web companies locking users in by preventing them from taking their personal data somewhere else.

Schmidt was asked if users could get all of their search history and export it to Yahoo. “We would like to do that, as long as it is authenticated….If users can switch it keeps us honest.”

Matt looks at various Google products and finds that most of them do allow you to export your data, including Search, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Blogger, Google AdWords, Google Groups, and a few others.

Matt also mentions Google Talk, noting that the service supports the open XMPP protocol and therefore can be accessed by any XMPP client. That's definitely a big positive; in addition, you can export your contacts as a CSV file from Gmail (go to "All Contacts", click on "Export"). However, there's no easy way right now to get at your saved chat history; Gmail's POP access doesn't include chats. Clearly, that's something we'll want to address in the future.

Update 3:25 PM: added explanation on how to export contacts.

Lessons Learned: Google Report on Hard Drives

The other day, several Googlers released a white paper detailing the experiences they have had with hard drive failures in our datacenter machines. According to the report, there hasn't been a good study on hard disk lifespans in a really large population, so the decision was made to collect this data from the large number of machines that Google has in service. The study reached several conclusions, some of them surprising:

• There was no consistent pattern of disk failure associated with high temperature or increased disk activity.
  
• Some SMART error signals are well-correlated with impending drive failure, including scan errors, reallocation errors, and probational counts; drives that reported a scan error were 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days.
• However, other SMART error signals have only weak correlations with failure, namely seek errors and CRC errors; over 72% of all drives reported at least one seek error.
  
• A majority of the failed drives (56%) reported none of the aforementioned well-correlated errors, and a large fraction (36%) reported no SMART errors whatsoever.

As someone who has had a few drives go bad over the years, I found this very interesting. My key takeaway: certain SMART error signals (not all) serve as a valuable warning, but you can't count on SMART to tell you when your drive is about to fail.

Lots more data and details in the full paper.

Gmail Theater: Why Use Gmail?

Why you should use Gmail... in four acts.

And now that you're convinced you should use Gmail, you can sign up for an account at http://mail.google.com/mail/signup. As of yesterday, we've dropped the invitation requirement for new accounts, so anyone can use Gmail.

Google Kirkland in the News

A couple nice mentions of the Google Kirkland office in the news in the past few weeks:

Google Blog, 1/3/07, "Kirkland Calling"

When we set up an R&D shop in downtown Kirkland, Washington two years ago, we hoped to attract the best talent in the Pacific Northwest -- folks who are serious about their coffee and don't especially want to move to Silicon Valley. Since then we've attracted many engineers who were tickled silly about working on large clusters of several thousands of machines, not to mention shipping web and client-based consumer apps used by millions of people.

Seattle Times, 12/22/06, "Google exec heaps praise on local office"

It's such a great office we have here. Google's unusual in a couple of ways. We open engineering offices where the talent is, rather than bringing talent to a location. ... [In Kirkland] we have north of 250 employees, and we're approaching 200 engineers. It's just an incredible growth rate in two years.
[...]
One of the things we're increasingly trying to do is to export Mountain View work to the really incredibly successful non-Mountain View offices. It's clear the Kirkland office is hugely successful. We've got great engineers, great growth rate and incredible delivery. It's clear this is amongst our most successful offices worldwide.

Seattle Times, 12/15/06, "Google retreats from deal in Bellevue, may shop for office space in Seattle"

Oscar Oliveira, a broker at Colliers International in Bellevue, said he believes Google has turned its attention to parts of Seattle, such as Belltown and South Lake Union, which tend to be popular with young technology workers.
[...]
Google has been advertising for workers to fill a range of engineering-related jobs in the Seattle area. About two years ago, Google opened an engineering center in Kirkland, where it has about 250 employees, up 100 from June. Also, Google in May moved its Seattle sales staff of about 30 from South Lake Union to Fremont, saying the staff could expand to 75.
[...]
Google is expanding in Kirkland, where it occupies two floors at Central Way Plaza, and recently took an additional floor at a nearby building, said engineering director Peter Wilson.

New York Times, 12/9/06, "Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game"

“[Microsoft] had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,” said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After the stock fell, he said, “I wasn’t able to hire anybody for my group.”

Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.

“Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent,” he said. “If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds.” (Indeed, Google has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)

Google Holiday Party

Friday's Google Kirkland Holiday Party featured what one might expect at a Google company party - great food, classic video games, casino tables, and the Google logo as an ice sculpture.

I spent a fair amount of time at the blackjack tables. I like blackjack because it is a game that, if played carefully, can result in a player advantage over the house. Typically, in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, the house holds a 0.35% edge (with a 4 deck shoe) over the player, assuming the player plays the optimal blackjack strategy effectively. This edge can be erased and turned into a player advantage if the player keeps a hi/lo count, i.e. whether the chance of a ten being dealt is likely or not. However, doing so requires a lot of concentration, and playing even a few hands incorrectly can be very damaging. Recalling recent experiences in both AC and Vegas, it is extremely hard to keep the necessary concentration with all the flashing lights, buzzers, and general "this is real money we're playing with here" pressure.

So, Google's casino was a nice chance to play for fun in a low pressure enviroment. I got an initial stake of $30K (play money), and playing the basic strategy, built that into $100K in a relatively short time. The house rules here weren't posted, but I quickly found that they were VERY favorable to the player, including support for 5 card charlies, 2-1 payout on blackjacks, and something I hadn't seen before, pushes count as a win for the player.

Looking at the odds, support for 5 card charlies is a net gainer of 1.46%, and 2-1 on blackjacks is worth an extra 2.27%. Taking into account just those two rule changes, I was looking at a 3.38% advantage, and assuming about a 6% value for payout on pushes, the net player advantage was probably about 10%. With a number like that, you expect to double your money about every 7-8 hands, and I was able to do that several times over the evening.

When the dealer informed us that the casino part was about to shut down, I had chips totaling about $1M. There were prizes for the top 3 winners, and looking around, I saw at least two people who had what appeared to be bigger piles. Not wanting to lose out on account of being too careful with play money, I went all in on the last hand...

The dealer had a blackjack. Ouch.

If you find blackjack strategy or odds interesting, there is a lot to read at The Wizard of Odds.

Update: I found out from this site that about 9% of blackjack hands result in a push. So the player edge was actually over 12%. Will have to keep in mind for next time...

Tour of Google's Kirkland office

Robert Scoble (professional blogger, formerly at Microsoft) stopped by the Google office here in Kirkland, and we were nice enough to show him around. Watch the video at ScobleShow.

Google in Kirkland

Most people are surprised when I tell them that I'm working out of Google's Kirkland, WA office. Many have no idea that Google has a presence outside of California - even including many residents of Kirkland - and the rest wonder how much interesting stuff is allowed to happen away from Google HQ.

In short, there's a lot happening in the Kirkland office. With 200+ employees, the office is big enough that it's not just a satellite to Mountain View. Here are just some of the projects that are being worked on in Kirkland:

• Google Talk (blog)
  
• Google Video (blog)
  
• Google Maps (blog)
  
• Google Toolbar for Firefox
  
• Google Sitemaps
• Google Pack
• Google Desktop
  
• Google SMS
• and of course, Google Search

Kirkland's got a number of other things going for it as well. Recently the Chicagoist website did an interview with some engineers from Google's Chicago office (yes, there is an office there too), asking them why they chose to remain in Chicago instead of moving to California. Since I had had a similar dilemma in choosing between Kirkland and Mountain View, I read this with great interest. The responses were classic:

"It's much more livable [in Chicago]... I could sell my home right now and buy a shed in Silicon Valley. A small shed."
"I would gladly sit through six or seven months of Chicago winter to experience fall."
"I have a kid and I'd much rather raise him in Chicago. San Francisco has more pets than kids."

Substitute "Kirkland" for "Chicago", and you've captured what I was thinking at the time.

White & Nerdy

While Weird Al Yankovic' "White & Nerdy" resonated with a number of us here at Google, many lamented that it excludes a good part of Google's diverse workforce. When asked whether Weird Al might consider a more inclusive version of the song, his agent was unenthusiastic:

"While Weird Al is willing to poke fun at all races equally, his profession is an artform. We trust that our non-white audience can simply enjoy identification with being 'Nerdy'."

President Bush loves "the Google"

CNBC recently did a interview with President Bush, where he was asked if he ever used Google. From his response, he seems to be a fan:

HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

You can watch the video over at ThinkProgress.

Also, you can find the president's Crawford, TX ranch on this Google Maps search.