Google Data

We’re always working to make Google Maps even more comprehensive, accurate and useful. This month, we’ve crisscrossed the globe gathering more imagery, expanding features and growing our Map Maker community. In case you missed it, here are a few Go…

It’s Friday again, and we’ve got more videos for you. First up is a video we found by AndroidHive on using the Google Places API on Android. A nice quick intro that walks you through the basic steps.

Chris Broadfoot and Paul Saxman hung out T…

For the fourth installment of our series of posts highlighting new organizations participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code we have three organization administrators from the Open Lighting Project, Monkey and SimpleCV discuss their projects a…

Welcome back to our Social Fridays series, where we’re providing tips for getting set up optimally on Google+ each week. Last week, we shared best practices around placing +1 buttons on your site and tracking their performance. Today, we’ll move on…

“So when’s your last day again?”I pause for a moment, hoping that by delaying the answer I also delay the inevitable truth that I’ve hoped would never come. The flurry of goodbye emails in my inbox from the other interns don’t hide the fact t…

By Anthony F. Voellm (aka Tony the perfguy)

It’s amazing what has happened in the field of test in the last 20 years… a lot of “art” has turned into “science”. Computer scientists, engineers, and many other disciplines have worked on provable systems and calculus, pioneered model based testing, invented security fuzz testing, and even settled on a common pattern for unit tests called xunit. The xunit pattern shows up in open source software like JUnit as well as in Microsoft development test tools.

With all this innovation in test, there’s no wonder test is dead.  The situation is no different from the late 1800’s when patents were declared dead. Everything had been invented. So now that everything in test has been invented, it’s dead.

Well… if you believe everything in test has been invented then please stop reading now

As an aside:  “Test is dead” was a keynote at the Google Test Automation Conference (GTAC) in 2011.  You can watch that talk and many other GTAC test talks on YouTube, and I definitely recommend you check them out here.  Talks span a wide range of topics ranging from GUI Automation to Cloud.

What really excites me these days is that we have closed a chapter on test. A lot of the foundation of writing and testing great software has been laid (examples at the beginning of the post, tools like Webdriver for UI, FIO for storage, and much more), which I think of as Testing 1.0. We all use Testing 1.0 day in and day out. In fact at Google, most of the developers (called Software Engineers or SWEs) do the basic Testing 1.0 work and we have a high bar on quality.  Knuth once said “Be careful about using the following code — I’ve only proven that it works, I haven’t tested it.” 

This brings us to the current chapter in test which I call Testing 1.5.  This chapter is being written by computer scientists, applied scientists, engineers, developers, statisticians, and many other disciplines.  These people come together in the Software Engineer in Test (SET) and Test Engineer (TE) roles at Google. SET/TEs focus on; developing software faster, building it better the first time, testing it in depth, releasing it quicker, and making sure it works in all environments.  We often put deep test focus on Security, Reliability and Performance.  I sometimes think of the SET/TE’s as risk assessors whose role is to figure out the probability of finding a bug, and then working to reduce that probability. Super interesting computer science problems where we take a solid engineering approach, rather than a process oriented / manual / people intensive based approach.  We always look to scale with machines wherever possible.

While Testing 1.0 is done and 1.5 is alive and well, it’s Testing 2.0 that gets me up early in the morning to start my day. Imagine if we could reinvent how we use and think about tests.  What if we could automate the complex decisions on good and bad quality that humans are still so good at today? What would it look like if we had a system collecting all the “quality signals” (think: tests, production information, developer behavior, …) and could predict how good the code is today, and what it most likely will be tomorrow? That would be so awesome…

Google is working on Testing 2.0 and we’ll continue to contribute to Testing 1.0 and 1.5. Nothing is static… keep up or miss an amazing ride.

Peace…. Tony

Special thanks to Chris, Simon, Anthony, Matt, Asim, Ari, Baran, Jim, Chaitali, Rob, Emily, Kristen, Annie, and many others for providing input and suggestions for this post.

Our goal is to provide all our customers with the best digital marketing opportunities. In 2007, we launched Google TV Ads in AdWords to bring digital buying and measurement technologies to traditional TV advertising. Since then, lots of our clients have bought traditional TV advertising for the first time.

However, video is increasingly going digital and users are now watching across numerous devices. So we’ve made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google. We’ll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for web video publishers). We also see opportunities to help users access web content on their TV screens, through products like Google TV.

Of course we’ll continue to support our partners, and our clients’ campaigns, as we shut the product down.

Thanks to all our clients, partners and the team that has worked on Google TV Ads over the past few years. The future of video advertising is extremely bright and we’re excited to devote ourselves fully to it.

Posted by Shishir Mehrotra

Posted by Ian Dobb, Interim Global CIO at BBHEditors note:Today’s guest blogger is Ian Dobb, Interim Global CIO at the renowned advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH). Ian led the implementation of Google Apps for Business across five differen…

This guest post is by Dr. Steffen Fritz, and Ian McCallum, researchers for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, an international research organization that conducts policy-oriented research on global problems.  

During the …

Posted by Boris Khvostichenko, Product ManagerDo you use Google Calendar to schedule catch ups with distant friends and family? Now, if you’ve upgraded to Google+, you can schedule a face-to-face video chat right from Google Calendar using Google+ Han…

LaTienda is an award-winning, family-owned business supporting artisanal firms in Spain. The firm works with small family-run businesses, many of which are dedicated to centuries-old food-making traditions. With warehouses in Williamsburg, Virgini…

Understanding the customer journey, from consideration to conversion, is no easy feat. But with tools like Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) in Google Analytics, we’re working to make it easier to uncover new insights and opportunities to improve marketing…

Earlier this month we announced the Google Places API Developer Challenge, a 10-week application development event designed to spur the creation of applications focused on civic needs. We’re excited to see how you can find solutions to critical needs…

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)Whether you’re a seasoned century rider or a casual beach cruiser, finding the best biking routes can be a challenge. That’s why today we’re bringing mobile biking directions and navigation to the 10…

Whether you’re a seasoned century rider or a casual beach cruiser, finding the best biking routes can be a challenge. That’s why today we’re bringing mobile biking directions and navigation to the 10 countries where we launched desktop biking dir…