Over 151,000 kilometres of track, 7,000 stations, 1.3 million employees and 160 years of history. Indian Railways is one of the most celebrated railway networks in the world. A few months ago, we celebrated the 400th Indian train station connecting to the internet with Google Station, our public Wi-Fi program. Today, we’re bringing Indian Railways’ heritage and sights to the entire world. The most gorgeous architecture, iconic trains and charismatic personalities of Indian Railways can now be found on Google Arts & Culture.
The first rail journey in India, a 14-coach train from Bombay to Thane in 1853 ushered in a new era of an India connected by track, rendering previously remote villages accessible. A century and a half later, just as trains once opened passages across the subcontinent, Google Arts & Culture’s new project “The Railways — Lifeline of a Nation” is making these passages accessible for the world to experience.
Anyone can now explore India’s railways in unprecedented detail with over 100 exhibitions that bring together more than 3,000 images, 150 videosand 150 iconic locationsacross India. Zoom into ultra-high resolution images made with our Art Camera, like maps of the East Indian Railwaysthat the British used to connect Calcutta with the North West Provinces; get a 360 degree look around the workshops of cardboard rail model enthusiasts; or take a behind the scenes peek at Darjeeling loco shed.
All aboard The Fairy Queen- the locomotive inaugurated by the East Indian Railways in 1855 and among the oldest functioning steam engines in the world.
ganey-indianrailway
Go behind the scenes and find out how Indian Railways employees, like veteran technician Ganey Khawas keep the trains running.
We invite everyone to take an online journey with us to see the breathtaking sights of India’s railways on Google Arts & Culture’sonline platform and the free Google Arts & Culture mobile app on Android and iOS.
There are so many travel resources out there it can feel like you spend hours researching flights, hotels and sites before you feel prepared to book your trip. In fact, 46 percent of leisure travelers globally think travel planning takes too long, according to our recent research with Phocuswright. To make trip planning faster and effortless, we’re working on new ways to help bring your existing travel plans together—and even plan your next trip.
Pick up travel planning where you left off
When you look for top travel destinations worldwide—even if you haven’t booked anything yet—we’ll help jump-start your trip planning with relevant suggestions right in Google Search. We’ll show you things to do, day plans or travel articles. As you start booking and receive your flight or hotel email confirmations in Gmail, these travel recommendations will be further customized in organic search results on Google. For example, if you’re searching “Austin” and already booked your hotel, you’ll see things like flight prices, weather and events for your dates of travel, and even restaurants near where you're staying.
In addition to helping you fill in the gaps with your existing trips, in October we’ll launch new features in Your Trips that will make it easier to organize travel plans still in the works, and resume planning where you last left off. For example, if you’ve recently started looking at traveling to Milan, we’ll show you potential trip information in Your Trips like flight prices you’re tracking (if you have any), destination-specific flight and hotel searches, and places you’ve saved. That way, you can easily pick up your travel research when you come back to Google. To see Your Trips, search for “my trips” on Google, or tap on the Your Trips tab from Google Flights or Hotels on your phone.
If you don’t want to see private results, you can opt out by adjusting your Private results and Web & app activity settings. See more information in Google Settings.
New Year’s in NYC? See if flight fares are higher or lower than usual
Wondering whether you've found a decent price for a flight can be the most stressful part of planning a trip. On Google Flights, we’re expanding the same tip you already see for Thanksgiving—which tells you whether a flight price is higher or lower than usual—to include December holidays like Christmas and New Year’s. This tip will appear worldwide over the coming weeks when you search for flights on your phone over the December holidays. We’ll also notify you if prices are not going to drop or if they’re likely to rise in the next five days.
For more information on holiday travel, flight price trends and cities with great hotel deals, check out this infographic.
Find the right hotel for you based on location, location, location
Not sure where to stay? Try the new hotel location score which summarizes the hotel’s neighborhood based on information from Google Maps. You can see if the hotel is close to things like bars, landmarks or public transportation. For example, you’ll see if a specific hotel is near boutique shops to fill your fashion fix or within walking distance from the Milan Duomo. You’ll also get information on getting to and from airports.
We’ll continue to work on making trip planning across Google effortless. Use these new features to help make planning your next trip easier—and more fun!
As part of a collaboration between Google, photo industry consortium CEPIC, and IPTC, the global technical standards body for the news media, you can now access rights-related image metadata in Google Images.
It’s traditionally been difficult to know the creator of images on the web, as well as who might own the rights. This information is often part of image metadata, and is key to protecting image copyright and licensing information.
Starting today, we’ve added Creator and Credit metadata whenever present to images on Google Images. To see this information on Google Images, you can click on the “Image Credits” link to view the metadata fields. Over the coming weeks, we will also add Copyright Notice metadata.
Also in partnership with CEPIC and IPTC, we hope to create better usage guidance for photographers, photo agencies and publishers to include copyright and attribution information in image metadata. For more on how to best implement IPTC metadata, refer to the IPTC Guidelines.
Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter, a provider of digital asset management tools for photographers and brands, describes why this is a big step for Google Images: “Employing IPTC metadata standards in Google Images results will help ensure proper attribution of credit and support photographers’ copyright, while also boosting the discoverability of content and creators. This is a win for the professional photo community.”
If you have questions, feedback or suggestions, please let us know through the Webmaster Tools Help Forum.
When a devastating flood hit Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2008, Pierson’s Flower Shop & Greenhouses—which has been a part of the community since 1928—found itself under eight feet of water. The store was closed for five months and business fell 40 percent, while many other small businesses in the area never recovered. When shop owner Allan Pierson was on the brink of giving up, he revamped his online presence and turned to tools like Google Ads to reach customers, and email to run the business remotely.
When disaster strikes, small business owners like Allan shouldn’t have to worry about their businesses on top of everything else. To commemorate National Preparedness Month, we’ve just released a new resource with tips on how digital tools can help your business prepare for a disaster, like backing up critical documents in the Cloud and creating a Google Group to easily keep in touch with all of your employees. Preparation is particularly important for small businesses: according to FEMA, roughly 40 to 60 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster.
Though we hope you never need to enable your emergency plan, by using digital tools we hope that you can minimize the long term impact on your business.
Twenty years ago, Google started with an ambitious goal to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. At the heart, we want to build technology that helps as many people as possible, regardless of who you are or where you are in the world. As we celebrate our birthday this month, we’re reflecting on some of the progress we’ve made toward that end. The work is never done, but here are 20 highlights from the past two decades:
Finding answers … and making connections
1. Billions of people have used Google Search to find answers to (literally) trillions of questions every year—from “how to help my community” to “how to find home” to all the many small questions in between. With job search, we’ve helped connect 100 million people to job opportunities in 92 countries.
2. Google Maps has helped people find their way with driving directions in 240+ countries and territories, spanning 40 million miles of road—that’s 83+ trips to the moon and back. And by connecting people to 150 million places around the world, Maps helps communities and businesses grow. Most moving are the times when Maps has helped people find a sense of place in the world—from Rio’s favelas to one’s own memories.
Saroo Brierley: Homeward Bound
Saroo Brierley searched for his family for years before finding his way back home with the help of Google Earth.
3. People can now talk to their Google Assistant in more than 20 languages, and in some cases it can even keep up if you’re bilingual. You can ask about everything from fantasy football advice to help finding a parking spot, and do everything from meditate to order a coffee. In the car, the Assistant has helped people reach their destination on tens of millions of commutes, and has sent tens of millions of messages, helping people stay in touch while keeping their eyes on the road.
4. Translate helps over half a billion people ask for help, make new friends, and say "thank you" across 100+ languages. More than 143 billion words are translated every day—that’s more than 161,000 times the number of the complete works of Shakespeare.
From Syria to Canada
Emad and his family left Syria for a safer life in Canada. There, they had to grow accustomed to a new home, country—and language.
Saving valuable time (and space!)
5. More than 500 million people use Google Photos every month, backing up more than 1.2 billion photos and videos per day. Photos has also freed up over 410 petabytes worth of space—that’s like more than 25 million 16GB devices—plus peace of mind knowing you'll always have room to capture more memories.
6. With the typing time reduced by Autocomplete in Search, we estimate people worldwide collectively save over 200 years of typing time per day!
7. Gmail’s Smart Compose, a new machine learning-powered experience that helps you write email faster, saves people from typing over 1 billion characters a week (to put that in perspective, that’s the equivalent of nearly 4 million tweets).
Helping you stay safe online
8. One billion people visit the Google Account each year to access settings to safeguard their data and privacy.
9. Safe Browsing protects more than 3 billion devices from malware and phishing schemes, helping you browse the web with confidence.
10. And Gmail blocks nearly 10 million spam and malicious emails every minute, helping you keep your email and data safe.
Giving people tools and platforms to grow
11. Each year for the past five years, our search and advertising tools have helped provide more than $100 billion in economic activity to businesses, publishers and nonprofits across the United States. And we’re inspired by the stories of local and small businesses, from John’s Crazy Socks to American Hats, who are using the web to grow.
12. Google Play has helped developers grow app businesses and reach users in 190+ countries and across more than 2 billion Android devices. From an app that helps blind people see to a game that creates art, these creators are doing amazing things on our open platforms.
Sara always had a passion for technology. With a Developer Scholarship from Google, she's pursuing her dream of becoming a web developer.
Expanding access to learning opportunities
14. More than 25 million students worldwide are using Chromebooks in schools to share ideas, create projects, go on virtual field trips, and learn from each other and their teachers.
15. Art lovers and history buffs have marveled at artifacts from 1,500+ museums across 70 countries in Google Arts & Culture. From Abramovic to Zhengming, that’s thousands of artworks and 6 million photos, videos, manuscripts and other documents at your fingertips. And people have met more than 78 million selfie matches from 650+ institutions with Art Selfie.
16. People can access local versions of YouTube in 91 countries around the world across 80 languages—covering 95 percent of all internet traffic. And every day, people watch learning-related content over a billion times on YouTube.
An Eye Fit for Liberty
When his daughter needed a prosthetic eye, a father refused to settle for less.
Making an impact on a global scale
17. To help people in times of need, we’ve activated SOS Alerts to provide better access to emergency information in more than 200 crisis situations, and people have viewed Public Alerts—for things like storm warnings or hurricane evacuations—more than 1.5 billion times.
When Abu was 15, he discovered the potential of machine learning. Now what he’s building could help doctors and patients all over the world.
Google’s name is based on a number—a one with 100 zeroes after it. When we went public in 2004, the offering contained a math joke about the irrational number "e." Oh, and we call our campus headquarters the “Googleplex,” which, if it were spelled differently, would be a one followed by a googol of zeroes. You could say we’re numbers people.
But these numbers are different. They represent something incredibly meaningful—the billions of people who have posed a question, sent an email, opened a new tab, dragged a pin on a map, asked a big question. Billions of people who have found answers, gotten things done or started on a new adventure. Billions of people whose lives have gotten, just possibly, a little bit better or brighter thanks to something that we built.
Everything we’ve done for the past 20 years has been built with you in mind, and we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity you’ve given us to be a part of your lives. And two decades in, we’re even more dedicated to building products and services that make a difference for you.
You may remember 1998 as a glorious year filled with endless games of Snake on your brick phone (you couldn’t go through the walls yet) and listening to “Baby One More Time” at max volume on your discman. Meanwhile, in Susan Wojcicki’s disused garage in California, two university students, Larry and Sergey, decided they were going to organize the world’s information and make it accessible to everyone.
To celebrate Google’s 20th birthday, today we invite you to travel back in time and take a virtual stroll through the original Google Garage in Street View—(almost) just like it was 20 years ago.
The original blue side door to the Google Garage on Santa Margarita, Menlo Park
As you chase cables that scramble haphazardly down the hallway, you’ll find a bedroom (ahem, “main office”) with a whiteboard that reads “Google’s Worldwide Headquarters” in black text. On another whiteboard, you’ll see a cheeky homage to Google’s logo update back in 1998. Doesn’t the delightful wallpaper remind you of tea at your grandparents' place?
On Google’s 20th birthday, Thursday is not just for throwbacks. It’s also for thank yous.
Google wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for you: a curious crowd that comes to Search with all of life’s questions. Today’s birthday Doodle is dedicated to you, and the 20 years of searches that represent the inquisitiveness of people everywhere.
In today’s Doodle and hidden in Search for a limited time, you’ll be thrown back to (and flashed forward from) the days when “what is Y2K?” was your most burning tech question, Pluto was still a planet, and clip art was a critical part of visual communication.
The days when the music format du jour was the MP3 file and it was cutting-edge to watch a DVD. When you had to choose a screen name before hopping into a chat room.
You can also peer back into the last two decades through the lens of trends by visiting 20years.withgoogle.com and seeing many of the people, pop culture and pizza (yes, pizza) that inspired your searches from 1998 to now.
We hope this jaunt down memory lane reminds you of your own magical moments when you found just what you were looking for with Google. For the next 20 years and beyond: Search on.
Sitting in her apartment in Mumbai a few years ago, Radha wondered if there were activities nearby for her two-year old son. She had recently moved to the city from a small town about 300 km away in search of better education for her children. Since then, she’d slowly built up a network of acquaintances, mostly from chance meetings traveling up and down the lift. But there was something missing. Back in her hometown, it was easy to ask Shanti Aunty across the way about local dressmakers. And—along with the keys to the family cupboard—she had inherited many business relationships from her mother-in-law; the local baker, the nearby mobile repair shop. But in such a big city, finding answers to simple local questions was more difficult.
A kernel of an insight
This kernel of an insight, gathered by Jeannie Foulsham while studying local search in India in 2014, led to the development of a product we call Neighbourly. Neighbourly is a mobile application that provides people with an easy interface to ask and find answers to neighborhood questions and is available in seven cities in India so far. And we built it in direct response to conversations with users like Radha.
This is just one example of how user experience (UX) research can build an understanding of people’s context, behavior, and comprehension to inform the design of products or services. There are hundreds of researchers across Google who gather insights to inform all of our product offerings. This research is especially key to how we approach products for the next billion users—people coming online for the first time, usually on mobile. To ensure we're living up to Google's mission of universally accessible information, we must deeply understand the similarities and differences in how these people look for and use information in their day to day lives.
Diving deeper to understand the role of technology
In the early days of developing Neighbourly, Muzayun Mukhtar, a UX researcher based in our Bangalore office, would spend hours walking the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and many other smaller cities conducting intercept interviews, stopping people for a conversation to get a glimpse into their lives, their impressions and their relationships. She spent time in small communities called societies, where she learned about the social dynamic between neighbors. For a deeper look at how they lived, Muzayun worked through locals to meet people in their homes for contextual inquiries to see how they solve day-to-day problems. She met people from different stages and walks of life: mothers, homemakers, those new to the community as well as neighborhood lifers. She would then take these insights back to our product teams for incorporation into the product roadmap.
We visited many communities in cities around India during the design and development of Neighbourly, including this society in Mumbai.
Discovering a core user value
As the team iterated on ideas in late 2016, Muzayun met Divya, a mother of two, for an interview at a children’s park in Borivali. Divya told her, "I’ve been struggling to find a good physiotherapist in this area for six months. People in my locality are isolated—so busy. Other than a hi or hello once in a while, we don't reach out. But that wasn't how things were when I was growing up. We used to know each other. We used to help each other.”
Divya’s remarks reinforced some key themes that the team had heard before, and helped crystallize the need that Neighbourly could address. First, people prefer trusted word of mouth to answer local questions. And second, for many people, neighborhoods feel broken; you no longer know your neighbors so word of mouth is less of an option. The team’s challenge was now clear: How can we encourage communities to respond in a caring, helpful way when people have questions? How might we help people find trusted, neighborhood answers?
Delivering thoughtful, usable design
UX research doesn’t stop as products are designed and developed. In the case of Neighbourly, we conducted multiple rounds of iterative usability tests where we showed product designs to participants and gleaned their feedback. This gave designers on the team some key insights that they built into the product. For example, we added a mic button to quickly transcribe questions in the user’s local language, making it easier for people to ask questions as effortlessly as if they were asking a friend. We also added a quick swipe to advance question cards to make the product more fun and lightweight.
Getting feedback on our designs directly from people helped us make changes to meet their needs and increase usability
Learning through immersion
Product team members routinely join UX researchers in the field to ensure they fully internalizes the needs and context of the people they’re building for, and ground product decisions in real user insights. As Ben Fohner, a product manager on the Neighbourly team, says: “There’s no substitute for sitting down with somebody in their living room and watching them use (or try to use!) the product you’ve built. It’s a combination of incredibly exhilarating when you see an ah-ha moment—and incredibly humbling when something just doesn’t work. Spending time face-to-face with our users was essential in building Neighbourly, and a great source of motivation for the whole team, too.”
Product teams join in for research, building intuition and grounding decisions in real insights.
Putting it all together
Neighbourly is one product among many, developed to address a specific need. However, we’ve often found instances where addressing local needs can grow to have global impact. For example, Files Go, an app that helps you free up space on your phone, was built from insights gathered primarily in India and Brazil, but it’s resonated with audiences globally.
Google aims to build products that improve the lives of as many people as possible. And from the initial insight to the finishing pixel, UX research helps product teams stay connected to the pulse of the user. By staying focused on the needs, behaviors and concerns of the people for whom we’re developing our products, we can more effectively build for everyone.
Today, technologists from around the globe are landing in Houston for this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). It’s the ultimate meeting of the minds—over 20,000 women and allies from different backgrounds get together to learn, share ideas, and most importantly, get to know each other. The sense of community at Grace Hopper is one of the reasons women come back every year, including many Googlers who will be in Houston this week to participate in talks, panels, workshops and hanging out at our booths at the Career Fair and Technology Showcase.
There's a lot happening at GHC and large conferences can feel a bit overwhelming at times, so we spoke to a few Googlers (and experienced Grace Hopper-goers) to find out their tips and tricks for getting the most out of GHC:
Reena Lee (right) at #GHC16
Get inspired
I always look forward to that awesome energy the first time I enter the keynote room and find myself surrounded by thousands of amazing women in technology from all over the world. - Alejandra Estanislao, Software Engineer
There’s inspiration everywhere at GHC. Check out the “Beyond ‘Be Confident’” panel or the “Pivot or Die” panel to learn from the career journeys of inspiring women, including Googlers Karen Ng, Group Product Manager and Sara Khoury, User Experience Design Director.
Pick up new skills
I'm looking forward to helping attendees create their first Actions on Google action that will be published so the world can try it with the Google Assistant right after the conference! - Reena Lee, Product Manager
Take advantage of hands-on learning experiences like the “Getting Started with Actions on Google” workshop led by Mandy Chan, Developer Community Manager, and the “Nail Your Promotion” workshop with Catherine Courage, VP, Design.
Meet new people
I'm pretty sure everyone says this but my favorite part is always meeting some pretty baller women! I can't tell you the number of times I've just been blown away by what pretty much everyone has accomplished and I have yet to meet anyone at the conference that didn't have an interesting story to tell. - Arathi Mani, Software Engineer
Look for opportunities to strike up a chat with your fellow conference-goers. We’ve got plenty of conversation-starting experiences at our booth at the Career Fair, the technology showcase, and our Google on the Green activation at Discovery Green before and after conference hours.
Arathi Mani (second left) with Alan Eustace (second right) and other Googlers at #GHC15
Connect with your community
I served as a Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) Site Lead in Cambridge, MA this past summer. We taught 30 under-represented rising college freshmen the basics of HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python, and App Engine over the course of 3 weeks. I'm really looking forward to seeing my former CSSIers, who are now scattered throughout the US and Canada for college! - Gloria Li, Associate Financial Analyst
Catch the “Effective Networking” panel to hear from Michelle Duffy, Engineering Director, Site Reliability Engineering and other technologists about building community across organizations. Learn how conversations at events like GHC can turn into lasting relationships!
Words of wisdom jotted down by Soujanya Aithal at #GHC14
Get a different perspective
This year my aim is to understand the challenges faced by women in tech from different backgrounds, benefits and challenges posed by societal norms and cultures, and understand the technical projects attendees are working on. - Soujanya Aithal, Software Engineer
Seek out opportunities to get a new view on things, such as the Machine Learning for Everyone workshop, where software engineers and research scientists discuss creating inclusive machine learning algorithms.
Take time to recharge
Incorporate the downtime you need into your schedule. Also don't give in to FOMO—it's OK to miss some things in order to have a good experience at other sessions. - Tod Hilton, Technical Writer
This is important. There are many exciting things to do at GHC, so make sure you prioritize the events that matter most to you and make time for rest.
Join the online conversation
If you can’t make it to Houston for #GHC18, no worries, we’ve got you covered. Follow the @LifeatGoogle and @GoogleStudents social media channels, where we’ll be sharing event highlights and behind-the-scenes content all week long.
This may sound familiar: you and your friends are trying to pick a place for dinner, but no one wants to make the decision and you don't know where to go. How do you decide on a place that your BBQ aficionado bestie, quinoa-loving sister, and wannabe foodie friend can all enjoy without scrolling through a ton of links in group text messages?
Starting today, you can use Google Maps to easily plan where to go as a group. Simply long press on any place to add it to a shortlist - the small floating bubble on the side of your screen. Once you've added places, you can quickly share the list with your friends on any messaging platform, add or remove additional places, and vote together in Google Maps.
rally long press
Add places to a shortlist
rally share
Share the shortlist with friends
rally vote
Every member of the group can add or delete places, and vote on a place together
The group planning feature starts rolling out on Android and iOS this week. To get started, download the Google Maps app or update it from the Play Store or App Store.
Today is European Day of Languages, celebrating the many languages that are spoken every day across Europe, with events ranging from language-learning crash courses to multilingual concerts. And Europe's rich linguistic diversity is increasingly reflected online. For example, regional languages like Welsh and Frisian are more and more commonly used on social media.
We're committed to making technology work in the languages people want to use it in, for as many people across the world as possible. Our focus on bringing technology to as many languages as we can is borne out across many of our products. One example is our keyboard app Gboard, which offers smart keyboards for Android in more than 60 European language varieties, with machine learning smarts like auto-correction and predictive text. In many languages, Gboard also lets you type by voice using speech recognition.
Beyond the 24 official languages of the European Union, Gboard supports many other languages, like Welsh, Corsican, Luxembourgish, Sicilian, Scottish Gaelic, Upper Sorbian, Northern Sami, Manx, and more (see the full list on our help center). And for multilingual users, Gboard supports using multiple languages without changing keyboards, making it easy to use the right language at the right time.
Supporting such a rich array of languages poses its own technological challenges. For example, in some languages, nouns and verbs can have lots of inflectional forms. Learning the nuances of such a rich vocabulary required us to come up with a new approach to language modeling in our machine learning systems. As another example, some European language varieties, like Romansh and Austro-Bavarian, pose challenges to machine learning systems due to their relatively large degree of internal variation, with differences in the way the language is spoken from one valley to the next. For such languages, Gboard's on-device personalization can help you learn exactly your typing style.
Of course, lots of other Google products are available across many European languages. For example, Google Translate can help you break down language barriers across more than 30 languages of Europe. And the Google Assistant is available in 10 European languages, with more on the way. Wherever you are, and whatever language you speak, we wish you a happy European Day of Languages!
“So you think you know every country in the world?” my late friend and drumming partner Richard Feynman said with a twinkle in his eye, back in 1977.“Well, then, whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?”
I replied, “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman—there is no such country!”
But there was: Feynman remembered Tuva as a purple splotch on the map just outside of Outer Mongolia. In the 1930s Tuva issued dozens of marvelous triangular- and diamond-shaped stamps that he collected as a boy. Then the country mysteriously disappeared.
His question turned into a quest—to learn everything we could about Tuva, and to get there ourselves. On the occasion of Google's 20th anniversary this month, I've been thinking about how different our search was then compared to today.
Back then our main source of information was libraries—local, university, even the Library of Congress. Much of the information was in Russian (Tuva had been absorbed into Stalin’s Soviet Union during World War II), so we recruited a linguistic wizard named Glen Cowan to help. (Today you can use Google Translate.) We scoured card catalogs, microfilm reels, cross-library listings—and books that literally needed the dust blown off—in hopes of finding a useful nugget of information. Each nugget, rare and unexpected, delivered a small delight of discovery, and kept our quest alive.
Search for “Tuva” today on Google and you’ll be showered with so many nuggets that you can’t possibly treasure them all.
Back then it took us months to find a single grainy black-and-white photograph of Tuva; search for “images Tuva” on Google today and you’ll find a hundred color photographs in a second.
Back then it took us a year to find a single hand-drawn map of Tuva’s exotically spelled capital; today, you can instantly see a detailed street map of Kyzyl based on satellite imagery, with current traffic conditions.
Because information about Tuva was so difficult to find in the pre-Internet era, our quest was full of twists—much like a Feynman diagram (go ahead, search!). One twist took us to Moscow, where Cowan and I discovered and then brought the largest archaeological and ethnographic exposition ever from the Soviet Union to the United States. It included spectacular items from Tuva, of course. We thought the Nomads exhibition would provide us the key to finally setting foot in Kyzyl; it actually was the key for a dozen Soviet academicians to visit the mysterious Disneyland. No matter: we learned the meaning of the Taoist saying, “The reward is in the journey.”
Undaunted, we spread our enthusiasm by sending out Xeroxed newsletters to our friends, encouraging them to pass them on and send back SASEs (self-addressed stamped envelopes) for future newsletters. We also set up a “Friends of Tuva hotline” (221-TUVA) to spread the latest information about the singing cowboys from Tuva riding in the 1993 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. Each Tuvan cowboy could sing two notes simultaneously, something we could scarcely imagine when we read about it in books; today, YouTube has dozens of “Tuvan throatsinging” music videos, and the “Friends of Tuva” newsletters are online.
Sadly, Feynman died in 1988, just weeks before receiving the coveted formal invitation that would allow us to set foot in Tuva at last. But his memory lives on, here and in the land of his dreams. Today, you can find an article online about “Feynman Rock” in Tuva, carved to commemorate the centenary of Feynman’s birth in May this year. At a related event in Kyzyl, Cowan gave a talk in Russian about the work that won Feynman the Nobel Prize, while a simultaneous commemoration live-streamed into Kyzyl from Caltech.
The view from Feynman Rock in Tuva
Today I embark on dozens of quirky diversions every week, usually ending up happily lost in the world of Wikipedia (to which I contribute a dollar a day for my habit). But these easy jaunts seem more like sugar highs than the satisfying meal that Tuva provided, so in an effort to recapture that spirit of adventure, I’ve begun to frequent my local library and read good old-fashioned books again.
Nevertheless, I'm thankful for the embarrassment of riches and fools gold that is today’s Internet. And on Google's 20th anniversary, I offer up a fervent hope: let us never stop pursuing the mysteries that surround us—wondrous mysteries that await sustained, serendipitous, and joyful investigation. Quests can still begin with an intriguing question; adventures still await the curious mind.
Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to great pages! You're off and away!
You have brains in your head. and fingers on your hands. You can search for whatever and see where it lands. You're on your own. With an empty white box. Roll a dice, flip a coin, if you’re feeling lucky (or not).
You'll spin around pages. “Do a barrel roll” with care! About anagram you’ll say: "did you mean” isn't right there... With your head full of brains and your hands full of fingers, You're too smart to tap any Super Mario box figures.
And if you do not find links That you want to click on. You'll go back to the start, Type again and #SearchOn.
But searchers, beware! We've hidden more things in the wide open air ;)
And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU’LL FIND ANSWERS!
So… Whether you’re Aussie or Kenyan or mostly Hungarian Or an Indo-Peruvian-Czech vegetarian. You're off to great pages! Today is your day! Your search page is waiting. So...get on your way!
Today’s consumers are accessing media from a broader variety of devices and in more moments than ever before. To be successful, marketers need to know whether ads had a chance to be seen, how many people saw them, and if they changed perception or behavior along the consumer journey.
That’s why we’re announcing new capabilities in Display & Video 360 for measuring viewability, reach, and brand lift across media sources and properties.
Enabling custom metrics with Active View
Research has consistently shown that ads need an opportunity to be seen to drive impact. We support the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) definition of viewability as the minimum threshold across all display and video ads to help make advertising measurement simpler and more effective. And we’ve completed third-party accreditation by the MRC for viewable impressions in Display & Video 360, as measured by Active View. But we know that many advertisers and agencies have different definitions of viewability based on their unique business requirements.
That’s why we recently launched custom metrics in Display & Video 360, measured by Active View. With these new controls, advertisers can select custom criteria such as the percentage of the ad that must be on screen and the amount of time an ad must be visible to count as an impression. Once set up, these metrics are reported for all video campaigns, within hours. Custom metrics are in addition to the MRC accredited reporting based on MRC viewable impressions, as well as advanced audibility and visibility metrics that are already available in Display & Video 360.
Display & Video 360 custom metrics
Display & Video 360 Active View product animation
Display & Video 360 custom metrics
Bringing Unique Reach reporting to Display & Video 360
Reach and frequency remain hallmark metrics to plan and measure the scale of advertising campaigns today. But, you also need to be thoughtful about how often you connect with a single user to avoid overloading them.
This week, we launched Unique Reach reporting for all your display and video ads, no matter where they run. With Unique Reach in Display & Video 360, you can measure the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user you get from display and video ads. Metrics are de-duplicated across devices, campaigns, inventory, and formats so you can see how many people you reached and how often you reach them. You’ll also have an expanded lookback window of up to 3 months, and the ability to report at both the campaign and site level, so you know which campaigns and sites are driving the greatest reach.
Extending Brand Lift measurement to all of your video buys
Reach and frequency metrics tell you how many people you reach and how often, but you also need to understand the effectiveness of your video ads in changing perception — across all the places they’re viewed.
That’s why we’re expanding the brand perception insights that you get from Brand Lift beyond YouTube to all of your video advertising, across media properties. With Brand Lift in Display & Video 360, you can easily measure the impact of your video ads on metrics like brand awareness, ad recall, and consideration. You can also see how your video ads impact the number of searches for your brand on Google Search and YouTube, so you can assess their effect on brand interest. You can even segment reporting by audiences, creatives, and publishers to better understand what’s working. These insights enable you to optimize your campaign mid-flight to drive greater impact.
While Brand Lift studies in Display & Video 360 are currently available by working with your Google account team, in the coming months you’ll be able to set up Brand Lift studies self-service, and view Brand Lift reporting right in Display & Video 360 alongside metrics for all of your display and video ads.
“Brand Lift in Display & Video 360 helps us see the impact of all of our video ads, including YouTube, in one place. With these insights, we can optimize performance to drive ad recall and awareness, and plan future video campaigns in a smart and data-driven way relevant to our target audience and the viewing environment.”
— Steven Pollack, Head of Media & Communications, Nestlé
With more intelligent metrics covering viewability, reach, and brand perception change across campaigns, marketers have the information they need to create more relevant, useful, and impactful experiences for consumers.
Is my marketing working? It sounds like a simple question, but in today's complex environment, answering it correctly is a challenge. To help advance advertising measurement, we’ve invested in third-party accreditations through the Media Rating Council (MRC), and partnerships with leading measurement technology providers. Together, these efforts help ensure that the metrics our advertising solutions deliver are trusted, align with industry standards, and can be compared across providers.
Today, we’re announcing new MRC accreditations across Google advertising products, including Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform (specifically Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager), and Google Ad Manager.1
We’ve also made progress with Google Measurement Partners for viewability, brand safety, and reach reporting on YouTube.
Trusted metrics across Google’s advertising solutions
Advertisers consistently tell us that they struggle with comparing media placements to determine where to invest their limited marketing resources. It’s a problem that’s made even worse when media providers use different definitions of commonly accepted metrics like clicks, impressions, and viewable impressions.
By endorsing the MRC standards and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines for media measurement, we stand on the side of marketers, who deserve transparency and fairness in their media buys.
Below, you’ll see the comprehensive list of MRC accreditations we currently maintain across search, display, and video ads on the web and in apps. Accredited metrics include various aspects of our clicks, served impressions, viewable impressions, and invalid traffic detection and filtration.
With today’s announcements, YouTube video ad impressions and viewability metrics for desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app are now fully MRC accredited in Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager. And we’ve begun the audit process for MRC accreditation of recently added metrics, including brand safety and Unique Reach reporting on YouTube in Google Ads.
“Google has consistently demonstrated a commitment to helping advertisers and publishers achieve transparency and quality in measurement through its work with the MRC. In addition to submitting products for initial consideration for MRC accreditation, Google also has expanded on the scope of what’s being submitted for existing accredited products. This progress is emblematic of what we at MRC consider to be our core industry mission: to help lift the bar for quality in measurement consistently upward.”
—George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director, Media Rating Council
“Google’s efforts to create transparency and choice through MRC accreditation demonstrates their commitment to delivering a better, more responsible advertising ecosystem. The ultimate goal is to ensure transparency at every step in the complex advertising supply chain, and Google’s efforts are helping us achieve that objective."
—Bob Liodice, CEO, ANA
More transparent YouTube measurement with trusted partners
To help advertisers measure YouTube media in a verified, privacy-safe way with the measurement solution of their choice, we've also made progress with Google Measurement Partners for viewability, brand safety, and reach reporting.
First, the YouTube data feed for video viewability reporting by third-parties is currently under audit by the MRC. Our ultimate goal is to achieve MRC accreditation for our integrations with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS), so advertisers can be confident that YouTube metrics have been third-party verified, no matter where they choose to measure.
In addition, brand safety verification on YouTube by both DoubleVerify and IAS is now in expanded beta. In beta tests with DoubleVerify and IAS, we’re seeing 99 percent success rates on brand safety across both auction and reserve, including Google Preferred.2
We’re also expanding our partnerships for reach measurement, which now include Nielsen, comScore, Kantar, and soon, Meetrics. This month, YouTube’s integration with Nielsen for mobile in-app measurement has expanded to Australia and Italy. This is in addition to the U.S., Canada, Japan, U.K., Germany, and France which are already available.
To know if their marketing is working, advertisers need access to accurate, timely metrics they can trust, regardless of which measurement provider they choose. Looking to the future, we’ll continue investing in measurement solutions and partnerships that help advertisers understand and compare the impact of their investments using commonly accepted metrics and standards.
1. New MRC accreditations achieved since our blog post in February 2017 include:
Google Ads:
Served Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Viewable Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Sophisticated Invalid Traffic Detection & Filtration for Clicks for search and display on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app, and Viewable Ad Impressions for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Google Marketing Platform:
Display & Video 360:
Clicks for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Served Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Viewable Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Campaign Manager:
Clicks for display and video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Served Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app
Viewable Ad Impressions for display on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
Sophisticated Invalid Traffic Detection & Filtration for Served Ad Impressions and Viewable Ad Impressions for display and video on desktop and mobile web
Google Ad Manager:
Served Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app, and for video on mobile in-app
Viewable Ad Impressions for display on mobile web and mobile in-app, and for video on desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app
2. DoubleVerify and IAS Testing, Global, June 2018
We recently made a change to simplify the way Chrome handles sign-in. Now, when you sign into any Google website, you’re also signed into Chrome with the same account. You’ll see your Google Account picture right in the Chrome UI, so you can easily see your sign-in status. When you sign out, either directly from Chrome or from any Google website, you’re completely signed out of your Google Account.
We want to be clear that this change to sign-in does not mean Chrome sync gets turned on. Users who want data like their browsing history, passwords, and bookmarks available on other devices must take additional action, such as turning on sync.
The new UI reminds users which Google Account is signed in. Importantly, this allows us to better help users who share a single device (for example, a family computer). Over the years, we’ve received feedback from users on shared devices that they were confused about Chrome’s sign-in state. We think these UI changes help prevent users from inadvertently performing searches or navigating to websites that could be saved to a different user’s synced account.
We’ve heard—and appreciate—your feedback. We’re going to make a few updates in the next release of Chrome (Version 70, released mid-October) to better communicate our changes and offer more control over the experience.
While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome.
We’re updating our UIs to better communicate a user’s sync state. We want to be clearer about your sign-in state and whether or not you’re syncing data to your Google Account.
We’re also going to change the way we handle the clearing of auth cookies. In the current version of Chrome, we keep the Google auth cookies to allow you to stay signed in after cookies are cleared. We will change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out.
We deeply appreciate all of the passionate users who have engaged with us on this. Chrome is a diverse, worldwide community, and we’re lucky to have users who care as much as you do. Keep the feedback coming.
Today, the European Commission published a Code of Practice on Disinformation in Europe -- a code we helped create. The Code is the next step in the work we’re already doing with experts and publishers worldwide to elevate quality information online and support news literacy.
Today, people have more information at their fingertips than ever before, and a free and open web is a vital resource for web users and businesses the world over. But some seek to exploit the web’s freedoms for harm, including by spreading disinformation—verifiably false information deliberately intended to deceive. Here are five ways we're investing globally to connect people to quality information online:
1. Improving Search to connect people to quality information
People expect to get great results in Search, and we fail in our mission if we surface poor quality or misleading results. We’re constantly evolving our approach to get people to the best and most useful results and over the years, we've invested significantly in protections against spam, bots, and other attempts to game our search results. In 2017, we announced that we’d made improvements to our evaluation methods and algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content. Every year we make thousands of improvements to Search to improve the quality of results for the wide range of queries Google sees every day. In 2017, we ran more than 270,000 experiments, with trained external Search Quality Evaluators and live user tests, resulting in more than 2,400 improvements to Search. To better deal with inappropriate Autocomplete predictions, we launched a feedback tool last year to inform improvements to our systems. We also updated our Autocomplete policies to prevent poor or offensive predictions.
2. Cutting the flow of money to scammers and misrepresentative websites
In recent years we’ve seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of the growing popularity of online news to make money. So we prohibit websites in our ad network from serving ads on misrepresentative content. Essentially this means that you can’t serve ads if you’re pretending to be a legitimate news website based in London when you’re actually a content scammer in a different city. By cutting off the flow of money to this kind of activity, we hope to remove the incentive to create it.
High-quality reporting by journalists and news organizations is crucial in the fight against disinformation. We’re committed to helping publishers grow their traffic, their audience, their subscriptions and their revenue for the long haul—last year, we paid $12.6 billion to publisher partners and drove 10 billion clicks a month to publishers’ websites for free. In 2015, to sustain innovation in digital journalism, we created the Digital News Initiative (DNI) with a €150million fund. We’ve built products in partnership with publishers to directly address challenges faced by the news industry, from the open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages to optimize content for the mobile web to Subscribe with Google and Player for Publishers, which make it easier for publishers to host and monetize their content. And most recently we launched the global Google News Initiative to help journalism thrive in the digital age, with a commitment of $300 million over the next three years. We believe this will help strengthen quality journalism, evolve business models to drive sustainable growth, and empower news organizations through technological innovation.
4. “Fact-check” labels in Google News and Search
We introduced fact-check labels to Google News and Google Search results to let publishers highlight fact-checked content and help people find and more easily consult articles that provide a critical outlook on claims made by others. Beyond its value to users, this feature helps support the work of the fact-checking community—a fast-growing field, with more than 150 organizations trying to tackle accuracy in the media as well as traditional publishers engaging in fact-checking work.
5. Funding innovation and research into disinformation
Newsrooms, researchers and civil society are also working to tackle this issue. To help these organizations, we’ve funded research; we’re partnering in industry initiatives like First Draft and Cross Check that help newsrooms fight misinformation; and we’re working with newsrooms and other platforms on standards for online credibility through the Trust Project.
We’re clear on our ultimate goal—to get people access to useful and relevant information from authoritative sources. We'll keep working with partners around the world to make it happen.
In 2004, our founders wrote that we were not a conventional company and never intended to become one. In that same letter, they set a vision for philanthropy that would contribute significant resources and Googler time to help solve the largest of the world's problems. Out of that tall order, we created Google.org. With other teams at Google, we’ve donated over $1.5 billion since 2005. Also, over the past four years, our Googlers have logged more than 1 million volunteer hours.
Since then we've had the privilege to partner with hundreds of organizations and nonprofit leaders from nearly every corner of the globe. When choosing our grantees, we look for new thinking on how to tackle all sorts of challenges—like closing global education gaps, using data science to improve criminal justice and supporting communities when disaster strikes.Importantly, we also look for organizations that are testing their effectiveness and sharing results transparently with the broader sector to increase understanding of what works.
As we celebrate Google’s 20th year anniversary this month, we’re recognizing the accomplishments of one of those organizations, where the impact of an investment that we made years ago is just coming to fruition.
In 2012, I met GiveDirectly co-founders Michael Faye and Paul Niehaus, who had a thought-provoking idea: what if it’s more effective to give money directly to individuals instead of through philanthropic programming? Enabling beneficiaries to have more of a voice in how to spend aid is not only more empowering, Faye and Niehaus thought, it can be more efficient.
The question sparked the beginning of a multi-year partnership. Since 2012, Google.org has provided $6 million to support unconditional direct cash transfers that benefit people in need and to research the impact of GiveDirectly’s approach. We’ve also had Googler volunteers provide services from engineering help to serving on their board of directors. In 2014, we joined USAID in funding GiveDirectly to study two methods to reduce malnutrition in Rwanda: providing cash directly to people who can choose how to spend it or using the same amount of funding on programs pertaining to water, sanitation, and hygiene and nutrition.
Last week, researchers released the findings. This study found that large cash transfers (~$530 per household) had a meaningful and significant effect on reducing malnutrition while small cash transfers or the tailored programming did not. With more cash, families could expand their children’s nutritional intake, improve the quality of their homes and pay down debt.
This research highlights the importance of evaluating different approaches to solving big problems: weighing the monetary value of cash transfers against the cost of developing other programs to tackle the issue. This evaluation framework is now being used by USAID in several studies. Along with GiveDirectly’s leadership, we hope that these types of studies will help other organizations identify the most effective ways of creating a better world, faster.
We admire GiveDirectly’s willingness to put forward big ideas and work with us to expand our understanding of how we can use capital and technology to support great leaders to improve social outcomes.
“Focus on the user and all else will follow.” It’s one of the first principles Google laid out in the early days, and it’s still a guiding force as we build new products. And these days, focusing on the user means understanding that, for many people, technology has become a source of distractions, rather than a useful tool. Research the Android team released earlier this month indicates that mobile devices can create a sense of habit and obligation that is hard to break, even as people look for ways to create a healthy relationship with technology.
With this in mind, over the past year, teams across Google have turned their attention to building features that help you better understand how you use your devices and apps, disconnect when you want, and create healthy habits for your whole family. Here’s a look at some of the ways we’re helping you reclaim a sense of balance and focus on what matters most to you:
Digital wellbeing data and controls for your Android phone
Android 9 Pie lets you see a dashboard of how you’re spending time on your device, including how many times you’ve unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you’ve received. You can also set time limits on apps, like “30 minutes for Chrome.” When you’re close to the limit, you’ll get a nudge reminding you, and when time is up you won’t be able to use the app anymore (unless you cheat!). You can also try Wind down, which helps you remember to stop scrolling and get to sleep. These features are currently in beta for Pixel users.
Digital ground rules for your family
Every year, more and more kids have access to connected devices: according to our research, 75 percent of kids age 6-12 own or share a tablet, and 52 percent of kids age 6-12 own or share a smartphone. Our Family Link app, which is now available in nearly every country around the world, helps parents better manage their kids’ experience with technology. Family Link lets parents set screen time limits, approve or block certain apps, remote lock devices, and view activity reports so they can stay in the loop on how their kids are exploring.
Last week we shared that in addition to using Family Link for children under 13, parents around the world can use Family Link to supervise their teen’s existing Google Account (see applicable age for a teen in your county).
You choose how you YouTube
It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re watching YouTube videos. That’s part of the fun! But for those times you want to set some boundaries, YouTube has added features to help you understand how much time you’re spending in the app and help you take a break. The new Time Watched profile tells you exactly how much time you’re spending in the app, and you can set a reminder for yourself to take a break once you’ve hit a certain amount of time. We’ve also added the option for you to bundle YouTube notifications into one daily digest. You can even choose what time of day you want to see it.
We’ve always aimed to build products that help you get things done efficiently and free you up to focus on the other things that matter to you—from Search, where our goal has always been to get you an answer as fast as possible, to tools like Smart Reply in Gmail which suggest text for you. That’s more important now than ever, and we’ll keep building with that principle in mind.
The world we live in today is very different from the one when Google started back in 1998. We’re no longer using clunky computers to perform simple searches and send basic emails—with the phones in our pockets, we can accomplish things we couldn’t have come close to doing with ye olde desktop. But as technology becomes increasingly woven into our day-to-day, making sure it’s improving life—instead of distracting from it—is more important than ever. That’s focusing on the user, and that’s what we’re continuing to do.
Google Arts & Culture started back in 2011, and if Google’s mission is to make the world’s information more accessible, then Arts & Culture aims to make more culture accessible to anyone, anywhere. Since the early days, we’ve collaborated with partner institutions as varied as Japan’s Tezuka Osama Museum, Brazil’s Inhotim Museum and the U.S. National Parks. In many cases, we’ve collaborated with the cultural sector to build special technologies designed to bring their stories to life for the digital world—from our trolley to Cardboard to the Art Camera to a little thing we call the Art Selfie and state-of-the-art AI experiments.
But enough talk. While it’s nearly impossible to choose the best highlights from this massive collection, it’s time to take a quick tour through 20 of Google Arts & Culture’s hidden treasures:
1. One of the world’s oldest works of art. This figurine found in Berekhat Ram in Israel is believed to be 233,000 years old. Microscopic analyses have proved that it was shaped by human hands—apparently the first artists in the world.
Figurine from Berekhat Ram – The Israel Museum
2. A city full of temples, preserved through 3D. In 2016, an earthquake damaged many of the temples in Bagan, Myanmar. Working with CyArk, a nonprofit that works to preserve 3D digital archives of at-risk monuments, we’ve made it possible for people to go on a virtual tour of the city of a thousand temples, as well as other heritage sites around the world.
3. Fantastic beasts from long ago. You don’t need dino DNA to come face to face with prehistoric predators. It’s a lot safer to meet colossal sea dragons and other prehistoric creatures in VR.
4. The stilettos of an American icon. There are few icons as iconic as Marilyn Monroe. And Monroe’s sparkling red stilettos, designed by Salvatore Ferragamo, are more than a fashion statement—they’re a feat of engineering. As part of a project exploring the past and present of fashion, you can see these red pumps up close and learn the story behind this shoe and thousands of other fashion pieces.
“The Kiss,” arguably the most popular work by Gustav Klimt, was first exhibited in 1908. It is one of the icons of European modern art, representing the culmination of the phase known as the “Golden Epoch.” With gigapixel technology, you can zoom in to see each gilded detail.
The Kiss – Gustav Klimt
7. A track lost to history. The original phonograph of Louis Armstrong’s “Tiger Rag” may have disappeared from memory but for Deutsche Grammophon. We worked with the record label—the world’s first—to restore and digitize their sound archives and tell the story of Emile Berliner, who invented the grammophon player.
8. What a freedom fighter takes home. Upon his release from Victor Verster Prison, Nelson Mandela’s belongings were gathered up, inventoried, and signed over to a member of his release team. Included on the list is a surfboard. Mandela took great pleasure in being allowed to go swimming—but every time Mandela went in the water, warder Jack Swart had to go in with him. Swart wasn’t an adept swimmer, so Mandela requested a “boogie-board” for him to try.
9. The private home of a celebrated female artist. The personal life of Frida Kahlo was the subject of many of her works and remains fascinating to this day. And the house where Kahlo was born, lived and died is in many ways a physical reflection of her creative mind, as a sanctuary and inspiration for the artist. We captured the La Casa Azul on Street View with the Trolley for anyone to explore.
8. Tiger Rag by Louis Armstrong – Deutsche Grammophon.png
Tiger Rag by Louis Armstrong – Deutsche Grammophon
9.Mandela Inventory list – Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.jpg
Mandela Inventory list – Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory
10. La Casa Azul –Museo Frida Kahlo.png
La Casa Azul – Museo Frida Kahlo
10. A piece of space history.
The Space Shuttle Discover is one of NASA’s most notable orbiters. Discovery was used to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—one of 39 missions in 25 years of service. And you can step into space exploration history with a tour of Discover in virtual reality, alongside two astronauts who helped deliver Hubble to orbit.
Astronaut on an EVA – Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum
11. Age-old lessons in craftsmanship, rediscovered. Japan's traditional craftsmanship is world-renowned, and few things capture the beauty and mastery as much as the making of "Arita ware."
12. The sights and sounds of Rio de Janeiro’s comunidades. Take an interactive 360° bike ride to explore the some of the most vibrant—and previously unmapped—neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and meet some truly inspiring cariocas.
13. A legendary queen. Nefertiti—whose name means “the Beautiful One Has Come”—was one of the most powerful and influential women in Ancient Egypt. Her bust, on display in the Neue Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island, is completely unique—no other Ancient Egyptian stone bust like it is known.
14. The hidden connections between artworks. They say any two people in the world can be connected through friends of friends, in just a few steps. How about artworks? Using machine learning to analyze the visual features of artworks, the experiment X Degrees of Separation finds pathways between any two artifacts, connecting the two through a chain of artworks.
15. The tallest Gandhi in the world
In 2014, the headquarters of the Delhi Police was the site for an unprecedented collaboration between a government body and street art. The artists Anpu and Hendrick ECB collaborated on a portrait of Gandhi so huge—152 feet tall—that it required the tallest industrial crane available in India to complete it.
11.Flower vase with design of dragon and clouds in overgraze enamels – Tachibana Museum.jpg
Flower vase with design of dragon and clouds in overgraze enamels – Tachibana Museum
12. Christ The Redeemer – Rio de Janeiro Department of Conservation.png
Christ The Redeemer – Rio de Janeiro Department of Conservation
13. Bust of Queen Nefertiti – Neues Museum.png
Bust of Queen Nefertiti – Neues Museum
14. X Degrees of Separation.png
X Degrees of Separation
15. Mahatma Gandhi Mural, St+Art India.jpg
Mahatma Gandhi Mural, St+Art India
16. The (original) bedrooms—virtually reunited. Van Gogh was a prolific correspondent as well as artist, writing many letters and postcards throughout his lifetime. These often included the first sketches of many of his most famous masterpieces—including a drawing of the world-famous The Bedroom, included in a letter dated 17 October 1888 to Paul Gauguin.
Left: Autograph letter, dated 17 October 1888, to Paul Gauguin – The Morgan Library & Museum. Right: The Bedroom – Van Gogh Museum
17. The philosophy, in ink, of one of Confucius’ most distinguished pupils. The most important collection of artwork in Chinese history is held in the Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City, home to 24 emperors for nearly 500 years. One of the collection’s oldest surviving pieces is this calligraphy by renownedOuyang Xun about Confucius’ most distinguished student Bu Shang.
18. The design process behind one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks. Architect Jørn Utzon took inspiration from nature to design the shelled roof of the iconic Sydney Opera House. In this exhibit, you can see how early designs with a lower roof profile evolved into the upright design we recognize today. The final design was the result of three years of experimentation, and each shell was derived from the shape of a sphere.
19. A revolution in the making. A Scrapbook compiled by the Suffragette Ada Flatman draws you into the struggle for women's rights—from 18th-century activists to modern-day trailblazers. Discover never-before-seen news cuttings, flyers and photographs from the Suffragette movement in the Road to Equality exhibit.
20. Art criticism—from an unexpected source.
Three paintings. Two art experts. One kid. Can the competing art experts correctly guess famous paintings based off a kid's descriptions? That’s the idea behind the video series Name That Art.
17. Bu Shang Studying, Running Regular Script – The Palace Museum.jpg
Bu Shang Studying, Running Regular Script – The Palace Museum
18. Model detailing the sections derived from a sphere that comprise the final scheme for the roof – Sydney Opera House.jpg
Model detailing the sections derived from a sphere that comprise the final scheme for the roof – Sydney Opera House
19. Scrapbook compiled by the Suffragette Ada Flatman – Museum of London.png
Scrapbook compiled by the Suffragette Ada Flatman – Museum of London
