Tag Archives: Google

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Google Drives Better Than You Do

Chris Urmson, the leader of Google’s Self-Driving Car Program, presented research at a recent robotics conference in Santa Clara, Calif., that show Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel.

His statements come from analyzing data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars over hundreds of thousands of actual road miles in California and Nevada. One analysis showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were.

Google has been testing its cars on public roads since 2010, always with a human in the driver’s seat who can take over if necessary.

“We’re spending less time in near-collision states,” said Urmson. “Our car is driving more smoothly and more safely than our trained professional drivers.” Urmson also showed a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over.

Urmson dismissed claims that legal and regulatory problems pose a major barrier to cars that are completely autonomous. He pointed out that California, Nevada, and Florida have already adjusted their laws to allow tests of self-driving cars. And existing product liability laws make it clear that a car’s manufacturer would be at fault if the car caused a crash, he said. He also said that when the inevitable accidents do occur, the data autonomous cars collect in order to navigate will provide a powerful and accurate picture of exactly who was responsible.

Urmson showed data from a Google car that was rear-ended in traffic by another driver. Examining the car’s annotated map of its surroundings clearly showed that the Google vehicle smoothly halted before being struck by the other vehicle. “We don’t have to rely on eyewitnesses who can’t be trusted as to what happened — we actually have the data,” he said. “The guy around us wasn’t paying enough attention. The data will set you free.”

I continue to think that the implications for the insurance industry over the next 10 years from this technology development will be significant.

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Webmaster Academy: How Search Works

One of the topics I discuss at my Agency Internet Boot Camp is how search engines actually work. It is an important topic if you want your agency website to appear higher in search results.

First, your site needs to be “discovered” and comprehended by search engines, and understanding the fundamentals of how search works can help. Google has lots of computers that continually visit and analyze Web pages. These computers are collectively known as Googlebot. They give Googlebot an initial set of sites, and then send it out to visit those sites. It scans the content, and then follows links to other sites or pages that it finds. It then repeats the process on each page it lands on, and continues to spider out, hence the term “spidering” or “crawling,” which many use to refer to a search engine’s discovery process.

When Googlebot visits a page, it downloads and stores a copy (called a “cached” page) to their index. It analyzes each page, noting the words and any other relevant content. Googlebot understands some types of content, like text, better than others, like images or Flash (you can find some ways to make these better understood in Webmaster Academy). In order to perform well when customers search for you, it’s important that Googlebot can access and understand the content of your website.

Each time someone searches on Google, ranking algorithms draw up a list of relevant pages from the index of information that Googlebot has saved while “crawling” the web. This list is given back as the Google Search results page. To see if your website is included in Google’s index, you can use the site search operator, restricting search results to your site’s domain. For example a search for [site:youtube.com ] would only show results from the website youtube.com.

For a more visual look at Google Search, check out the How Search Works video below. If you’re interested, there’s a lot more to learn that’ll help you build your online presence at the Webmaster Academy.

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Google+ Hangouts Improve

Google continues to introduce changes and enhancements to the Google+ social network that might make it a more attractive platform for business use. The Hangouts feature has been updated and expanded, and the Huddles feature of the Google+ mobile app has been improved. With some of these updates, businesses can use the Google+ social network for video conferencing, online presentations, and general collaboration.

Google+ Hangouts

The new Hangouts On Air feature lets you use Google+ to broadcast online webcasts. Here are four ways agencies should be using Hangouts and Messenger:

1. Simple video conferencing—You don’t have to be in the same room, or even in the same city, to work together. If your agency, or at least your team, is all on Google+, you can use a Google+ Hangout for impromptu video conferencing. You can make it even simpler by creating a Circle comprised of the agency team so you can just invite that Circle to the Hangout.

Google+ Hangouts

2. Collaboration on the go—One of the changes that Google has introduced for Hangouts is that you can now participate in Hangouts from your smartphone. The mobile Hangouts feature is available for Android now, with an update coming soon for the iOS Google+ app. Participating in Hangouts requires a smartphone with a front-facing camera, but with this change it is even easier for people to jump onto a quick video conference session no matter where they are.

3. Webcast platform—Hangouts On Air turns the Hangouts feature into a tool for broadcasting online to the general public. The Hangout can still only have a total of 10 engaged participants, but with Hangouts On Air, an unlimited number of users can view the session. You can also record the Hangout so those who can’t attend live might still be able to benefit from it.

Google is also working on Hangouts On Air with Extras, which adds Screensharing, Sketchpad, Google Docs, and more for real-time online collaboration. This feature can be useful for presentations to the whole agency, or for conducting webinars for prospects or customers.

4. Messenger (Huddles) with pics—Google has renamed the Huddles feature of the Google+ mobile app to “Messenger” and added the ability to share photos as well. The group chat capabilities of Huddles (Messenger) are a great tool for businesses to collaborate and work together as a team any time.

Free tools like these make Google+ an attractive platform for agencies.

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Google Creates Free Mobile Resource

Google has launched GoMo, a free website resource that seeks to encourage businesses to create mobile options. “Every day more and more of your customers are looking for you on mobile devices,” Google writes in an official blog post. “If you don’t have a site that works for mobile, you’re missing out.”

Google GoMo

Google GoMo

Located at HowToGoMo.com, GoMo presents data Google uses to make the argument that businesses need to go mobile. It offers a tool that shows how a business’s website currently looks on a smartphone and provides tips on areas for improvement. It showcases exemplary mobile websites and highlights case studies of businesses on the mobile Web. And it includes a list of 12 vendors that can help a business craft a mobile website.

At a minimum, every agency should go to “Test Your Site” to see how your agency website would look to a prospect or customer who uses their mobile device.

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A Peek into Google’s Data Centers

Google is normally very secretive about its data centers. They recently posted a new video on its enterprise blog that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of its facilities. The video emphasizes security and environmental best practices.

Google Data Centers
Some highlights from the video:

  • Google builds its own customer servers.
  • Google uses its own custom, stripped down version of Linux. It uses only a minimum set of packages.
  • The facilities are hyper secure – vehicles can’t enter without authorization, and iris scanners are used at some locations.
  • Google rigorously tracks all hard drives that come into the facility.