More movies and TV shows from Twentieth Century Fox coming to Google Play and YouTube

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Google Play and YouTube offer the latest new movie releases and your favorite TV shows to enjoy on your Android phone or tablet and on the web. But you’ve been missing one critical thing…Stewie Griffin. We’re happy to share that Stewie, “Family Guy,” and more than 600 other titles from Twentieth Century Fox will soon be joining the catalog for you to rent or buy on Google Play and YouTube.

Today you can buy Fox’s new release Prometheus in HD, available three weeks ahead of the Blu-ray, DVD and video-on-demand release. And over the next few weeks you’ll be able to rent or buy your favorite Fox movies like X-Men, Ice Age and Black Swan, and TV shows like “Glee,” “Modern Family,” “New Girl” and many more.

These new titles will be available first in the U.S., and we’ll be bringing them to more countries soon. We’re now working with all six of the major film studios and many independent studios to bring you the best new releases and your favorite classics to rent or own.

Posted by Jonathan Zepp, Manager of TV & Film Content Partnerships

Greater accessibility for Google Apps

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It's been a year since we posted about enhanced accessibility in Google Docs, Sites and Calendar. As we close out another summer, we want to update our users on some of the new features and improvements in our products since then. We know that assistive technologies for the web are still evolving, and we're committed to moving the state of accessibility forward in our applications.

Since last year, we've made a number of accessibility fixes in Google Calendar, including improved focus handling, keyboard access, and navigation. In Google Drive, we incorporated Optical Character Recognition technology to allow screen readers to read text in scanned PDFs and images, and we added NVDA support for screen readers. New accessibility features in mobile apps (Gmail for Mobile and Google Drive on iOS and Android) included enhanced explore-by-touch capabilities and keyboard/trackpad navigability. For a full list of new features and improvements for accessibility in our products, check out our post today on accessible@googlegroups.com.

Based on these updates, we’ve also created an Administrator Guide to Accessibility that explains best practices for deploying Google Apps to support users’ accessibility needs. We want to give everyone a great experience with Google Apps, and this guide is another resource designed with that goal in mind.

For more information on these specific accessibility improvements, using Google products with screen readers, how to submit feedback and how to track our progress, please visit www.google.com/accessibility.

Posted by Jeff Harris, Product Manager

Moving, singing and dreaming with a Chrome experiment from Cirque du Soleil

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Cirque du Soleil stages impressive live performances that challenge the laws of physics and the limits of the human body. Today, at Google’s Big Tent event in New York, the wonder of Cirque du Soleil transcended the confines of real world performance and embraced the entire web through Movi.Kanti.Revo, a new sensory Chrome experiment crafted by Cirque du Soleil and developed by Subatomic Systems.

Movi.Kanti.Revo comes from the Esperanto words for moving, singing and dreaming. In the experiment, you can follow a mysterious character through a beautiful and surreal world to encounter enchanting Cirque du Soleil performances and live an emotional journey made of love, doubts, hopes and dreams.



Breaking with the tradition of point and click web browsing, you can navigate through this unique experience simply by gesturing in front of your device’s camera. This was made possible using the getUserMedia feature of WebRTC, a technology supported by modern browsers, that, with your permission, gives web pages access to your computer’s camera and microphone without installing any additional software.

To bring the creativity of Cirque du Soleil to the browser, we mixed traditional HTML and CSS with 3D transitions and HTML5 APIs. If you’re more technology-curious, you can get a backstage tour via our Chromium blog and a brand new technical case study.

Chrome Experiments like Movi.Kanti.Revo demonstrate how the web has evolved into a beautiful creative canvas underpinned by continuously evolving web technologies. For optimal viewing, you’ll need to use a computer that has a camera and a browser that supports WebRTC, like Chrome. You can also access the experiment from a tablet or a mobile phone for a slightly different yet still beautiful experience.

Start your journey at www.movikantirevo.com.

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome blog)

Hanging out for Jewish-Arab dialogue in Israel

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Despite the fact that Israeli Arab and Jewish youth live in the same country and even study at the same universities, they often grow up without meeting. When tensions rise in the region, this lack of mutual understanding can lead to stereotyping, hostility and even violence.

We believe the Internet can help break down these barriers. In honor of today’s 30th annual International Day of Peace, we’re partnering with the Peres Center for Peace, a non-profit organization founded by the President of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres. The center promotes cooperation and peacebuilding between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel as well as between Israel and its Arab neighbors.


Together, we’ll be holding a series of Hangouts on Google+ designed to enable dialogue between Israeli Arab and Jewish students. “Hanging Out for Peace” is a six-month project that will involve nearly 150 Israeli university students, women and men, with an equal number of Arabs and Jews. Students will be divided into mixed Jewish and Arab ‘circles’, matched with other students who study the same subject at university.

The circles will meet via Hangouts on Google+, led by instructors from the Peres Center, and will undertake online and offline projects related to the circle’s area of academic focus. After a series of Hangouts, the students will meet face to face, present the projects they’ve developed to the larger group of participants and discuss issues that arose during their work together.

The Internet provides a perfect platform for dialogue and cooperation. It can help overcome physical barriers and connect people from different cultures who have shared interests and common values. We’re excited to see how this project develops and hope that, in a small way, it will help foster coexistence and understanding between Israeli Jews and Arabs and, in the future, build bridges between other communities, too.

Posted by Doron Avni, Head of Policy, Israel

More spring cleaning

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Technology offers so many opportunities to help improve users’ lives. This means it is really important to focus or we end up doing too much with too little impact. So today we’re winding down a bunch more features—bringing the total to nearly 60 since we started our “spring” clean last fall.

• AdSense for Feeds was designed to help publishers earn revenue from their content by placing ads on their RSS feeds. Starting October 2, we’ll begin to retire this feature—and on December 3 we’ll close it. Publishers can continue to use FeedBurner URLs powered by Google, so they won’t need to redirect subscribers to different URLs. For more information visit the AdSense Help Center.
• Classic Plus is a Google Search feature that lets people upload or select images to use as a background on Google.com. Users won’t be able to upload new pictures starting from October 16, and we'll turn the service off in November 2012. You'll continue to have access to any images you've uploaded.
• Google storage in Picasa and Drive will be consolidated over the next few months, so users will have five GB of free storage across both services. If you’re paying for storage, your free storage will now be counted towards your total. So if you buy a 100GB plan, it will give you 100GB of total storage instead of adding to what you already had. We believe this approach will make it much easier for users. For both free and paid storage, people at or near their current storage limits will have the same amount of storage after this change.
• Spreadsheet Gadgets were designed to allow people to add customized features to Google Spreadsheets. But most popular gadgets have now been added directly into charts in spreadsheets. So we will slowly start turning off Gadgets in Spreadsheets next year.
• Starting on October 15, we'll stop issuing and displaying Google News Badges, as well as showing Recommended Sections. People can still tailor their Google News experience by adding custom sections or adjusting the frequency with which news sources appear.
• We've merged Insights for Search into a revamped Google Trends. You can now see search trends and compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties in a single place: google.com/trends. We will no longer support Trends for Websites, which allowed people to compare traffic to and audiences of different websites.
• Places Directory was an Android app that helped people find nearby places of interest. We've removed the app from Google Play and are taking down the Places Directory site because users can find everything in Google Maps for Mobile, which offers a much better user experience.
• We introduced +1 Reports in Webmaster Tools to help publishers measure +1 activity on their pages. Given that webmasters now use Social Reports in Google Analytics to get a wider view of social activity (including +1’s), we'll be discontinuing the stand-alone +1 Reports on November 14. Measuring social media remains a priority for Google Analytics, so stay tuned for future improvements.

We want people to have a beautifully simple experience when using Google. These changes will enable us to focus better so that we can do more to help improve the products that millions of people use multiple times a day.

Posted by Yossi Matias, Senior Engineering Director

Very Special Spindlers Writing Challenge!

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Hey guys! So... I've decide to quit writing and join the circus instead. Ha ha, just kidding--there's no way I'm walking the tight rope. But I am going to let you all take a swing at writing my forthcoming book "The Spindlers!"

Here's what's up: For the new Writing Challenge I'm going to provide you all the first sentence of The Spindlers as a prompt...and I want all of you to tell me what the next 200 words will be! This time you only have ONE WEEK to get me your amazing ideas, and I'll post some of my favorites on this blog! Remember, stick to the 200 word limit--you don't want your fab writing to get disqualified because you went too far over.
Next week, after the challenge is over, I'll reveal the REAL first paragraph of The Spindlers! So hurry up and get me your pieces by 6/20/12... I can't wait to read them!
The first line of The Spindlers is..."One night when Liza went to bed, Patrick was her chubby, stubby, candy-grubbing and pancake-loving younger brother, who irritated her and amused her both, and the next morning, when she woke up, he was not."

Favorite First Lines

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A couple of days ago I announced the new Writing Challenge, in which asked you guys to take the first sentence of my new book The Spindlers and write the next 200 words. This got me thinking about first lines in general.It's amazing that sometimes the very first words leap straight off the page and into your heart. So to help further inspire you all in your writing, here are some of my favorite first lines in books! I'd love to hear what some of yours are!

And don't forget to get me your challenge submissions by 6.20.12!
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road and met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
-James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
--One Hundred Years of solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were normal, thank you very much.
--Harry Potter, dur

Strike spotted her: baby fat, baby face, Shanelle or Shanette, fourteen years old maybe, standing there with that queasy smile, trying to work up the nerve.
--Clockers, Richard Price

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think he or she is wonderful.
--Roald Dahl, Matilda

Collaboration Challenge 3

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Once again, I was so amazed at the wealth of responses for this writing challenge. You guys are so awesome that all I can say is... keep it up! We're already at 800 words which means this story is REALLY HAPPENING!
Special thanks to Ashley S Morgan for contributing this weeks story segment! I can't wait to read what happens next! Get in your 200 word submissions by JULY 26th. to laurenoliverbooks@gmail.com! And thanks so much for going on this literary adventure with me!


MollyLampart's 12th birthday was much like every other day, only moreboring: first tea with the governess and a posed photograph with herparents, then a procession of girls who giggled and brought chinadolls wrapped in pink paper, despite the fact that Molly hated pinkand that most of her dolls ended up dissected for medical researchpurposes. There was no sneaking out the door to climb trees in thenarrow, well-tended backyard, or hanging out her window hollering atthe trains steaming into the station two blocks away, or helpingTabby chase rats from the cellar.
It was a day to be quicklyforgotten, except for one thing:

OnMolly's 12th birthday, just as evening was starting to turn the skythe exact color pink Molly particularly despised, the emerald trainarrived, seemingly out of nowhere.
Itstarted with a rumble, a roar, a whistle, and the earth shook withthe effort of keeping the train on its surface. The train wasradiant in the dying sun, spraying colors off the emerald sidesso that Molly had to shield her eyes just to watch. But the bestpart, the absolutely most wonderfully breath-taking part of thewhole thing, was the fact that it was braking.
Theemerald train was stopping in front of Molly's house.
Excitementbuilding, she ran from the window, leaped down the grand staircase,passedbutlers and maids and other people who did not notice the girl flyingout the doorofthe four-story mansion. Rushing across the gravel walkway, Mollyskidded on herheels,nearly toppling into the stone fountain. 
Shefelt her jaw drop as her eyes rose to the emerald train stoppedin her garden. It was immense, looming, giant, and yet, itwas beautiful. For the first time all day, for the first timeshe could ever remember, Molly felt rather small.
Mollystretched onto her toes, straining to make out the words on the sideof the train. She could just make out the words “WALNUT’SWONDROUS” in thin gold lettering, reaching toward the sky, whenthe train door burst open and. BAM. 
Mollyjumped.  To her delight, she saw a flood of brightlycolored acrobats pouring from the train cars. Music danced inthe air, pounding an infectious rhythm through Molly's bones. She wasso transfixed she did not immediately notice the large, dark man whocame after them. But soon she felt someone staring at her, and sheturned.
Therewas something wrong with his eyes. One eye looked as dark as theLondon night, but the other… the other was not real. It was awalnut, carved to resemble an eye. His mouth quirked up at the edgesas Molly stared back in fascination, and although she couldn't hearhim over the music, she knew what he said when he opened his mouth. Hesaid, “Welcome”.
Emboldenedby his hospitality, her own curiosity, Molly stepped forward, inchingcloser and closer, until she felt his breath tickling her forehead.She stared up at him, transfixed by that walnut eye, that strangewooden presence that seemed to be pulsing with life, with magic. On adizzying, maddening impulse, she reached up and gently traced itsswirling groves.
 “Pullit out,” he said calmly, as if suggesting the most natural thing inthe world. Molly stared at him in wonder, and her heart beganthumping crazily in her chest. Her palms now slick with sweat, shelooked at him for reassurance. He nodded. 
Shecurled her fingers around the edges of the rough bark and gave it agood yank. She felt a sudden blast of wind. And now the man was not aman, but something else: the socket expanded into a gaping blackhole. From the blackness emerged a swirling force, like a live coil,like a whirlpool, as rippling and colorful as the acrobats, and itsuck her in and down, down, down, making her stomach clench and thenexpand in a sickening flutter.  After an endless fall, she hearda splash, and felt a fierce, wet coldness turn her bones to ice.

REQUIEM ARC GIVEAWAY CONTEST!

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There are now officially exactly three copies of Requiem in the world. Just three. In the whole world. One is mine. One is for my dad. And the other... well the other is for one of you! 

What I want to know is why YOU should get that one Requiem ARC! Send me your stories! Are you a crazy Delirium fan? Do you have a great and and funny story that occurred because of your obsession? Happy/sad/good/bad/funny/serious/long/short... I want to read them all! Convince me!
Send all your stories to laurenoliverbooks@gmail.com , and put "Requiem Giveaway" in the subject line. I'll post my favorite stories up here on the blog, and even if you don't get the one copy, you might get on the list for future ARCs or other Lauren Oliver swag.
I can't wait!

Collaboration Challenge Pt. 4 !!!!

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So far I've gotten almost 200 responses to the Requiem ARC giveaway! I'm so excited to sit down and read all of those stories, but in the meantime I'm really excited to announce the next part of the collaboration writing challenge! Once again, we had a lot of great entries, so remember to keep submitting, even if yours hasn't yet been selected. There's a lot of this story yet to come and we need as many voices as possible. This week's story is extra long. The first part was written by, Heather Kirby, and the second part was written by my friend and assistant Natasha! Next week, along with you guys, I'll jump in with a second of my own!
I can't wait for you guys to let me know what happens next! Remember, send the next 200 words of the story tolaurenoliverbooks@gmail.com by  AUGUST 8TH. That's ONE WEEK guys! And have fun with it!
First part of the story here!
Molly was shaking now. She was lying in a freezing liquid. Her eyes had been closed tightly in fear. Now, opening them, she got onto her hands and knee’s, limbs shivering as she looked up through the soaking wet hair that had fallen into her face.
Noticing her surroundings, her mouth formed a small O. She was lying in a crystal blue stream. It was very shallow. She seemed to be in a meadow of a forest. The trees were like spindly shadows reaching up and up to the dark sky, black as night. Yet there was a glowing sun, it seemed. Molly noticed that even though she was in an utterly different place, the emerald train was still there, as were the acrobats who looked like shadows themselves, like the trees--standing quietly and watching her.
The one-eyed man stood watching her too. When Molly finally noticed him, he reached out his hand toward her.
“May I have that back, please?” he asked.
Molly realized that she was still holding onto his walnut eye. She scrambled to her feet and splashed through the stream until she was standing right next to him. She hesitated, realizing again how much bigger he was then her, but decided it was only polite to return the walnut to him. The second it touched his hand it disappeared, only to re-appear in his eeye socket. Magic, Molly thought to herself. If her transportation to another world hadn't convinced her, then that finalized it. This was a man of magic.
Molly had always wanted to see magic, but she was so overwhelmed by her new circumstances that she didn't know how to say what she really wanted to which was something like, “please-take-me-on-adventures-and-teach-me-magic-and-show-me-everything!” Luckily, she didn't have to figure out how to articulate this sentiment in a sane way because the the walnut-eyed man seemed to snap into action.
“Right then!” He bellowed, “I'm sure you know why you're here so we'll just get right to it then. The train stops here, so we'll be going by foot and cart. We should get through the woods tomorrow evening if we hurry.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Molly spoke up, “but I don't know why I'm here.”
“Interesting,” the man said, “but it's not my job to tell you. My job is to take you through the woods. We have a show on the other side.” He looked up and addressed his acrobats, “come on you lazies! The carts aren't going to pack themselves!”

Arts and entertainment take the stage at our most recent Big Tent

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What happens when you bring together the head of the Metropolitan Opera, YouTube creators, Comedy Central and Justin Bieber’s manager to discuss the Internet’s impact on arts and culture?

In partnership with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, our Big Tent in New York City, held this week, fostered a constructive and sometimes challenging conversation that saw more opportunities than challenges for artists through the Internet and technology.

While the speakers recognized the disruptive force of the Internet, they also saw the possibilities that technology creates for artists of all stripes to connect with audiences and tell stories in creative ways. As Scooter Braun, manager to artists including Justin Bieber, said, “I don’t think the music industry has changed as much as people think it has. It starts with music. All we have to do today is study interaction, which is the same thing we’ve always had to do.”

Many speakers saw the Internet as essential to their own creative endeavors. YouTube creators like Michelle Phan, Issa Rae and Julia Nunes all used online platforms to launch their careers.

Newsweek Daily Beast’s art and design critic Blake Gopnik, while seeing benefits to new cultural platforms like Google Art Project, reminded the audience of the importance of appreciating the space that contextualizes a work of art. His message of the communality and shared experience of viewing art live was one that resonated with speakers from the performing arts who stressed that the live experience could not be replicated or replaced by technology.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt made a surprise appearance and emphasized the power of mobile and new platforms to change the way we live. He highlighted how the Internet has led to an increase in content and lower costs of distribution. One of the accompanying challenges, he noted, is how, in this shift to abundant content and cheaper distribution, business models adapt to build audiences and deliver value.

The afternoon ended with drinks under a literal big tent, hosted by Cirque du Soleil, which launched Movi.Kanti.Revo—a new sensory Chrome experiment—to close out the day.



Each Big Tent gives us the opportunity to engage with our audience on the impact of the Internet and society. Our next event is on innovation and entrepreneurship in Seoul, South Korea. Keep up with us at www.google.com/+googlebigtent.

Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relations, Europe Middle East and Africa

Google News turns 10

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Google News launched on September 22, 2002—exactly a decade ago.

Inspired by the widespread interest in news after the September 11 attacks, we invested in technology to help people search and browse news relevant to them. Google News broke new ground in news aggregation by gathering links in real time, grouping articles by story and ranking stories based on the editorial opinions of publishers worldwide. Linking to a diverse set of sources for any given story enabled readers to easily access different perspectives and genres of content. By featuring opposing viewpoints in the same display block, people were encouraged to hear arguments on both sides of an issue and gain a more balanced perspective.

In the last ten years, Google News has grown to 72 editions in 30 languages, and now draws from more than 50,000 news sources. The technology also powers Google’s news search. Together, they connect 1 billion unique users a week to news content.

Google News today
As we have scaled the service internationally, we have added new features (Local News, Personalization, Editors’ Picks, Spotlight, Authorship, Social Discussions), evolved our design, embraced mobile and run ancillary experiments (Fast Flip, Living Stories, Timeline). In parallel, we have monitored our quality and challenged our engineers to improve the technology under the hood—increase freshness, group news better, rank stories more accurately, personalize with more insight and streamline the infrastructure.

Take a look back at the past decade in Google News through the top stories from each year and a few notable features that have launched in the interim:



It’s undeniable that the online news landscape has changed immensely. Smartphones and social networks have transformed how news is accessed and sourced, and shifted the relationship between readers and authors. Open journalism is the norm, and aggregation by humans and machines is an integral part of the ecosystem. New technologies such as Hangouts on Air have the potential to connect users, journalists and opinion makers and transform how stories are discussed.

Opportunities abound, and we are excited for where we can take this product in the next decade. While change is inevitable, one thing remains the same: our mission is to bring you the news you want, when you need it, from a diverse set of sources.

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Scientist and Founder, Google News

(Cross-posted on the Google News blog)

Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship with the new Google for Entrepreneurs

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Startups and entrepreneurs have the power to build technologies and creative solutions that transform the world and move us forward. Innovation is happening everywhere: There are approximately 400 million entrepreneurs across 54 countries, and 69 million early-stage entrepreneurs offering new products and services. As Google turns 14 this month, we’re celebrating this creative spirit and officially launching Google for Entrepreneurs, the umbrella for our several dozen programs and partnerships around the world that support startups and entrepreneurs.

Our focus is threefold:

1. Partnerships with strong organizations that serve entrepreneurs in local communities
2. Google-led programs to bring our teams and our tools directly to entrepreneurs
3. Placing relevant Google tools in the hands of startups as they are getting off the ground and ready to scale

We’re already on a roll, with current projects ranging from support for the annual journey of entrepreneurship through India by train, to partnering with a number of accelerator and incubator programs around the world, like iHub in Kenya and Le Camping in France. And, this week, we’re rolling out our newest partnership: teaming up with Women 2.0 to bring their Founder Friday events to more cities. These events bring together current and aspiring female entrepreneurs once a month to connect with mentors and one another to build community. We’re partnering to launch Founder Fridays in Detroit, New Orleans, Sao Paulo and Moscow over the next year.

To celebrate both our birthday and the spirit of entrepreneurship that’s helped get us where we are today, we are hosting our first annual Google for Entrepreneurs Week, which will bring together more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and Googlers around the world. We kicked off over the weekend with a Startup Weekend event hosted at the Google Ventures Startup Lab in Mountain View, Calif., where Bay Area entrepreneurs came together to create their own startups in 54 hours. Over the course of the next week, Googlers in 28 cities across 13 countries will be hosting an event in their communities to bring their passion and expertise to local entrepreneurs. We’re teaming with a number of partners to make this happen, including the Idea Village in New Orleans, Communitech in Waterloo, Tetuan Valley in Wroclaw, the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg and the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce in Iowa.

For more on these existing programs and to stay connected on upcoming events, visit google.com/entrepreneurs and follow us on G+.

Posted by Mary Grove, Head of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach

Dive into the Great Barrier Reef with the first underwater panoramas in Google Maps

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Today we’re adding the very first underwater panoramic images to Google Maps, the next step in our quest to provide people with the most comprehensive, accurate and usable map of the world. With these vibrant and stunning photos you don’t have to be a scuba diver—or even know how to swim—to explore and experience six of the ocean’s most incredible living coral reefs. Now, anyone can become the next virtual Jacques Cousteau and dive with sea turtles, fish and manta rays in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii.


Get up close and personal with sea turtles at Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef
Starting today, you can use Google Maps to find a sea turtle swimming among a school of fish, follow a manta ray and experience the reef at sunset—just as I did on my first dive in the Great Barrier Reef last year. You can also find out much more about this reef via the World Wonders Project, a website that brings modern and ancient world heritage sites online.

At Apo Island, a volcanic island and marine reserve in the Philippines, you can see an ancient boulder coral, which may be several hundred years old. And in the middle of the Pacific, in Hawaii, you can join snorkelers in Oahu’s Hanauma Bay and drift over the vast coral reef at Maui's Molokini crater.



We’re partnering with The Catlin Seaview Survey, a major scientific study of the world’s reefs, to make these amazing images available to millions of people through the Street View feature of Google Maps. The Catlin Seaview Survey used a specially designed underwater camera, the SVII, to capture these photos.


The Catlin Seaview Survey team on location on the Great Barrier Reef, encountering a manta ray
Whether you’re a marine biologist, an avid scuba diver or a landlocked landlubber, we encourage you to dive in and explore the ocean with Google Maps. Check out our complete underwater collection, featuring a Google+ underwater Hangout from the Great Barrier Reef. And you can always explore more imagery from around the world by visiting maps.google.com/streetview.

Explore more underwater images
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth (and snorkeling enthusiast)

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)

More renewable energy for our data centers

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We announced our commitment to carbon neutrality back in 2007, and since then we’ve been finding ways to power our operations with as much renewable energy as possible. In our latest step toward this end, we just signed an agreement with the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) to green the energy supply to our Oklahoma data center with 48 MW of wind energy from the Canadian Hills Wind Project in Oklahoma, which is expected to come online later this year.

We’ve been working with GRDA, our local utility, to procure additional renewable energy since we “plugged in” our data center in 2011, and in February of 2012, GRDA approached us about purchasing power from Canadian Hills. In conjunction with the electricity GRDA already supplies Google to operate its data center, Google will pay GRDA a premium to purchase renewable energy generated by Canadian Hills. This brings the total amount of renewable energy for which Google has contracted to over 260 MW.

This agreement is a milestone for GRDA because it’s their first-ever wind energy project. It’s also a milestone for Google because it’s a little different from the previous Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) we’ve signed, where we agreed to buy the energy directly from the developer who built the wind farm. This agreement, by contrast, marks the first time we’ve partnered with a utility provider to increase the amount of renewable energy powering one of our data centers.

Although both options can make sense depending on the circumstances, we’re excited about this collaboration because it makes the most of our respective strengths: utilities like GRDA are best positioned to integrate renewable energy into their generation mix and to deliver power; we’re a growing company with a corporate mandate to use clean energy for our operations in a scalable way. We’ve been working closely with all of our utility partners to find ways to source renewables directly, and we look forward to working with other suppliers to deliver clean energy to our data centers.

Posted by Gary Demasi, Director, Global Infrastructure team

Bain in PA: SunGard

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Introduction:

This post is part of a series in an attempt to understand the influence and involvement of Bain Capital (and venture capital / private equity generally) in Pennsylvania. 

To do this I searched through newspapers and business databases to locate the names of Pennsylvania  companies that had some connection to Bain, then looked for general information on those firms.  Chain stores do not count unless the company is headquartered in Pennsylvania.

I have made a concerted effort to confirm information found in the press but sometimes this was not possible.   A similar effort was made to construct a search strategy in such a way that published corrections would also be found.  That being said, I am working primarily with self-reported corporate information and published media, not from original research.  Citations are provided so interested parties can reviews the research for themselves, and they are encouraged to do so.  This is not intended to be exhaustive research, though the intent was to be thorough. 





SunGard
SunGard is a software and technology firm with acorporate headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania. According to the history section of Sungard’s website (www.sungard.com), it was spun offfrom Sun Oil Co. in the 1970’s.  From1986 to 2005 it was a publically traded company.  In August, 2005 the company was taken privateby “Kholberg Kravis Roberts, Silver Lake Partkners, Bain Capital, BlackstoneGroup, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Providence Equity Partners, and TexasPacific Group” (Parker, 08/21/2006).  Anarticle in the Allentown Morning Call said it was the second largest buyout ofa public company by a private investor, costing $11.4 billion (“Sungard,” 3/29/2005).  An article in Euromoney said 

“At $3.5billion, it was the largest equity cheque written for an LBO, the largest everbuyout of a technology company, and included the largest ever consortium ofsponsors.  On top of that, it was thebiggest buyout since the RJR Nabisco deal 16 years earlier” (Tully, 2/2006). 

 The difference between the $3.5 billion checkand the $11.4 billion cost was borrowed (“Sungard,” 3/29/2005). 
That loan has had long term ramifications.  As noted by the Inquirer in 2011: 

“The company has reported a lost each yearsince 2005.  [Sungard spokesman Brian]Robins says that’s due partly to amortization of the $11 billion that SilverLake Partners and other buyout firms paid to buy SunGard that year.”(DiStefano, 5/17/2011). 

 A companyprofile by MarketLine published in 2012 gave a SWOT analysis of the firm.  It is overall positive.  The only weakness listed is a high debt level,a result of the company being taken private (SunGard, 7/17/2012)
Research uncovered several articles providingemployee numbers but a correction in the Inquirer on July 21, 2011 (“Clearing”)states that Sungard does not release the number of employees for any givensite, so none of that data will be provided here.  Interested parties are encouraged to searchfor that information themselves.
Sources
“Clearing the record,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July21, 2011
DiStefano, Joseph N., Conde to leave as head ofSunGard Data,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17, 2011
Parker, Akweli, “Sungard’s CEO relishes privateownership,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 21, 2006
SunGard Data Systems Inc.  MarketLine, July 17, 2012.
“Sungard’s CEO relishes private ownership,” AkweliParker, Philadelphia Inquirer, August 21, 2006
Tully, Kathryn, “Sungard Data Systems $11.3 billionLBO,” Euromoney 37 #442, February, 2006.