Google Data

If you walk down the halls of our New York office, you might learn something about the history of technology. This month, our walls showcase the contributions of Black inventors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in celebration of Blac…

Primary and secondary schools all over the world are using Google SketchUp, an amazing 3D modeling application. Shining examples of student work abound; take a look at Eric Yam’s space colony, Michael Hathorn’s history class project, or Andrew Nath…

Designing a good custom report can be challenging, and sometimes all you really want is a slightly different version of a standard report. Using the new “Customize” feature in Google Analytics allows you to tweak our definitions of Standard Reports int…

Two months ago, we announced our plans to roll out a new design for the Google bar. Our goal was to create a beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. Based on your feedback, we realized there were some elements of the new bar that we …

This morning, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced the election of 66 new members, including our very own Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and lead on Google Search. Amit joins a list of nine of us Googlers who have previously been recognized…

Last January, we introduced a new way to manage changes across multiple campaigns with lists, starting with negative keyword lists. These lists give advertisers the ability to create and manage groups of negative keywords in your account and to associa…

Millions of people use Google Earth to explore exotic islands, re-visit their childhood homes, and scout out day hikes. Are you one of them? If so, why not share your virtual travel with friends and family?With the recent release of Google Earth 6.2, y…

Every day the web becomes more powerful, allowing developers to create the next generation of beautiful, immersive experiences online. In our latest Chrome Beta release, we’ve made a few enhancements to ensure users have a smooth ride in these graphi…

In March 2010, we launched Search Funnels, a tool that helps advertisers understand the series of search impressions and search clicks that result in conversions.Since then, we’ve been tweaking the user interface to make it more useful and usable….

Posted by Adam Mein, Technical Program Manager, Google Security Team

In November 2010, we introduced a different kind of vulnerability reward program that encourages people to find and report security bugs in Google’s web applications. By all available measures, the program has been a big success. Before we embark further, we wanted to pause and share a few things that we’ve learned from the experience.

“Bug bounty” programs open up vulnerability research to wider participation.

On the morning of our announcement of the program last November, several of us guessed how many valid reports we might see during the first week. Thanks to an already successful Chromium reward program and a healthy stream of regular contributions to our general security submissions queue, most estimates settled around 10 or so. At the end of the first week, we ended up with 43 bug reports. Over the course of the program, we’ve seen more than 1100 legitimate issues (ranging from low severity to higher) reported by over 200 individuals, with 730 of those bugs qualifying for a reward. Roughly half of the bugs that received a reward were discovered in software written by approximately 50 companies that Google acquired; the rest were distributed across applications developed by Google (several hundred new ones each year). Significantly, the vast majority of our initial bug reporters had never filed bugs with us before we started offering monetary rewards.

Developing quality bug reports pays off… for everyone.

A well-run vulnerability reward program attracts high quality reports, and we’ve seen a whole lot of them. To date we’ve paid out over $410,000 for web app vulnerabilities to directly support researchers and their efforts. Thanks to the generosity of these bug reporters, we have also donated $19,000 to charities of their choice. It’s not all about money, though. Google has gotten better and stronger as a result of this work. We get more bug reports, which means we get more bug fixes, which means a safer experience for our users.

Bug bounties — the more, the merrier!

We benefited from looking at examples of other types of vulnerability reward programs when designing our own. Similarly, in the months following our reward program kick-off, we saw other companies developing reward programs and starting to focus more on web properties. Over time, these programs can help companies build better relationships with the security research community. As the model replicates, the opportunity to improve the overall security of the web broadens.

And with that, we turn toward the year ahead. We’re looking forward to new reports and ongoing relationships with the researchers who are helping make Google products more secure.

Following the success of AdSense in Your City events in North America and the positive feedback we’ve received so far, we’re expanding this program to reach more publishers. That’s right, we’re now packing our passports and taking these events to i…

Posted by Luis Herrero, CIO, Leroy Merlin Spain Editors note: Today we are happy to announce that the Spanish Leroy Merlin stores are moving to Google Apps for Business. Our guest blogger, Luis Herrero, CIO at Leroy Merlin Spain, tells us about the mov…

Once many of you enjoy sports and try to live a healthy life, we decided to create two new themes with an inspiration in sports. One of them brings up radical sports figures to your screen while the other one is fully illustrated with great soccer play…

KML Balloons in Google Earth – starting with version 5.0 – support HTML, CSS, and almost full JavaScript. This can be a great tool for developers looking to add rich content and interactivity into their KML files.However, it’s not always obvious how…

Posted by Sanketh Shetty, YouTube Slam Team, Google Research In a previous post, we talked about quantification of musical talent using machine learning on acoustic features for YouTube Music Slam. We wondered if we could do the same for funny vid…