Australia Blog
News and notes from Google Down Under
Google vs eBay Netball Challenge: The Re-Mix
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Posted by Christine Knight, Creative Maximiser (retail, media and entertainment team)
After our
crushing defeat
to the advanced netball forces of eBay in May, we were keen to challenge the eBayers to a rematch to prove our supremacy on the netball court.
With new team members recruited since the last event, and the will to get back our trophy, we threw down the gauntlet once more.
The big rematch took place on December 12. eBayers turned out in large numbers to support their team, including Simon Smith, eBay VP. (Simon was also kind enough to run our half-time auction of a Google Doodle signed by the Google Doodler, Dennis Hwang). In addition to the Doodle auction, we held a half-time shooting competition, with the money raised from both events (over $2000) going to the RSPCA.
The eBay team started the game hard and fast, trying to wear us down with their superior fitness. They took an early advantage of four points while we Googlers were still finding our feet.
Further into the quarter though, we made our comeback, gaining a small lead and keeping it for the rest of the game.
Finally, victory and a large shiny trophy were ours. A fitting end to 2007!
Google centre, Foxy, and eBay centre, Phuong, try intimidation tactics before the game.
Action close-up!
Wrestling the trophy back from eBay
Smiling, happy Googlers and eBayers
A change is as good as a holiday
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Posted by Carl Sjogreen, Group Product Manager, Australia & New Zealand
With summer holidays coming up, I regret to say that we aren't slowing down - we continue to work on finding the best ways to make your experience on Google as easy and useful as possible. To this end, you might have noticed a slight change to the
Google Australia homepage
to help you better navigate our site and find the information you're looking for.
We have introduced a new navigation bar at the top of the page to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as
Google Maps
and our popular email product,
Gmail
.
As well as being able to use this bar to navigate to your favourite Google products, using this navigation bar, you can "drill down" to specific types of information when you search. For instance, if you search for [
Great Barrier Reef
], you can click on the links for "web," "images", "maps, "news", "video" and "more" (under which you can see results in books, blogs, scholarly articles and more) to immediately find more results.
This is part of our vision of consistent navigation across all Google search properties. We recognise that the search result you are looking for may not be a web page - it may be a geographic location, a news article, an image, a blog post, a video or in a book. The new navigation bar makes it easier for you to find exactly what you want with a single click of the mouse.
Hope you find the new look and feel useful and, as always, feedback is most welcome!
Doodle 4 Google: The winner is...
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Doodle 4 Google Team
We were thrilled on Wednesday to
announce the winners of Doodle 4 Google
, our initiative for young Australians to draw their own version of the Google logo around the theme of 'My Australia'.
All four age group winners were decided by the Australian public in an online vote over the past month and Dennis Hwang, the original Google Doodler, selected the overall winner from these. Dennis said, "Choosing the successful entry was not easy. I was blown away by the creativity of all the doodles and wide array of Australian imagery which was used."
The national winner was Janelle San Juan, a 12 year old student from The
School of the Good Shepherd
in Victoria. The title of her drawing was 'A scene of sheer formality' and among other things, incorporated the distinctive beach sheds found at Brighton Beach in Victoria. Janelle's doodle will appear on the Google Australia homepage on Australia Day 2008. Dennis noted: "Her design was both unique and at the same time instantly recognisable as being Australian. The depiction of the sun, the kangaroo sign in the outback, the bathing box at the beach and the people relaxing in the shade of the tree make this the perfect doodle for Australia Day."
Congratulations Janelle! (She also wins $10,000 of technology equipment for her school and a MacBook Pro).
The other age group winners were Clayton Rowlings from Tasmania (Years 1-3), Madeline Spooner from South Australia (Years 7-8) and Angela Jones from South Australia (Years 9-10). Brilliant job by these guys who all win an interactive whiteboard for their schools.
To acknowledge the huge achievement on the part of our 32 finalists, we brought them to Sydney from all over Australia for our grand finale. The culmination of the event was our prizegiving, when Dennis announced the overall winner.
I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the various doodles, but we'll be putting the winners up on
our site
in the next couple of days. And don't forget to visit the Google Australia homepage on Australia Day next year to see the winning doodle taking centre stage.
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