Google TV Ads Platform Adds Bloomberg TV to U.S. Inventory

Google to Bring New Advertising Clients to the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® Network

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (September 25th, 2008) – Continuing efforts to make television advertising more relevant, accountable and measurable, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® network will make national cable advertising time in the U.S. available through the Google TV Ads™ platform. By offering self-service buying opportunities through Google TV Ads, the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION network will expand its reach to a wider range of advertisers, including those that are new to the medium.

With the addition of BLOOMBERG TELEVISION inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can not only reach the high-net-worth BLOOMBERG TELEVISION U.S. audience but can also gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale. Google’s TV Ads platform can report second-by-second data from millions of anonymized set-top-boxes, allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely than ever before. With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize the return on their TV ad investments. Google’s digital platform also makes it easier for advertisers to find relevant programming through its keyword search functionality.

“We’re pleased to be partnering with BLOOMBERG TELEVISION to continue to make TV advertising more relevant and measurable,” said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads. “We will now be able to give advertisers, many of whom have never tried TV advertising before, access to the desirable BLOOMBERG TELEVISION demographic.”

"The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION audience is the wealthiest and most powerful in cable television,” said Trevor Fellows, head of advertising sales at Bloomberg. “As high net worth viewers are extremely difficult to quantify using traditional methods, we believe that involvement with Google TV Ads from an early stage will help us and our advertisers learn more about our audience.”

Google TV Ads offers greater accountability in advertising. With Google’s auction-based pricing system, advertisers only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and they can receive integrated digital reporting within 24 hours. The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION network joins Google TV Ads’ growing list of inventory, which also includes NBC Universal and DISH Network.

"We’re very happy with the progress of Google TV Ads," said Michael Kelly, executive vice president for DISH Network, Google TV Ads’ current inventory partner. "Google TV Ads has brought more accurate, accessible, and up-to-date viewer measurement to the industry, enhancing value to our advertisers."

The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION service is the only 24/7 business and financial news television network. BLOOMBERG TELEVISION content is created exclusively by the global BLOOMBERG NEWS® service, with 143 bureaus in 69 countries. BLOOMBERG TELEVISION programming offers viewers a snapshot of the markets with fast, accurate reporting of world indexes, currencies, U.S. Treasuries, commodities futures, agricultural futures, and exchange traded funds, as well as special features, insight and analysis, and proprietary coverage of leading stocks and industry sectors. The worldwide service broadcasts in seven languages.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google’s Media Contact:

Elisabeth Diana
650-214-1515
press@google.com

Bloomberg’s Media Contact:

Heidi Tan
212-617-5375
htan14@bloomberg.net

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Google and Google TV Ads are trademarks of Google Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Google Calls for Ideas to Change the World with Project 10^100

Announcement
September 24, 2008

We’ve learned over the last ten years at Google that great ideas can come from anywhere. For that reason, Google is announcing as part of its tenth birthday celebration Project 10^100 (pronounced Project 10 to the 100th), a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.

For this challenge we are asking our users to send us exciting ideas for ways to improve people’s lives and have committed $10 million to turn up to five of the best ideas into reality. These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple – but they need to have impact. We will identify the 100 best ideas and then ask our users to vote on which ideas we should fund. Their votes select the 20 finalists, and then a panel of judges will choose up to five ideas for final funding.

We want to extend to the world the idea that great ideas come from all angles. Google Chrome emerged when engineers realized they needed an entirely new browser to sufficiently engage with rich web applications. Google News began when on 9/11 an engineer became frustrated that he couldn’t aggregate news sources from around the world in one place.

We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition. What are some examples of ideas we think are cool? A team of just two people are implementing a solution to help the millions of people who laboriously carry on their heads 5-gallon buckets of water for long distances by designing and distributing The Hippo Water Roller (www.hipporoller.org), a relatively inexpensive 24-gallon container that can be easily wheeled on the ground. First Mile Solutions (www.firstmilesolutions.com) is implementing simple but effective ideas for connecting isolated communities in developing countries to the Internet. One plan has communities tacking on Wi-Fi devices to public buses so they can detect and send stored emails and messages as the buses travel through unconnected areas. Google is excited to fund projects that similarly have a big impact.

Google is turning ten years old. What better way to celebrate than by empowering people to help others? May those who help the most win!

For more information, please visit: www.project10tothe100.com

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Plan Public Transit Trips in and Around New York City with Google Maps

Announcement
September 23, 2008

Today, we are excited to announce that Google Maps will feature route and schedule information from New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), the largest public transportation agency in the United States. Figuring out how to get around the metropolitan area on subways, buses and regional rail is now just clicks away in Google Maps.

Users will now be able to access station and schedule data for every service provider overseen by the MTA: New York City Transit (which includes subway and bus service), Long Island Rail Road, Long Island Bus, Metro-North Railroad, and the MTA Bus Company. Other connecting services also provide data via Google Maps, including NJ Transit (commuter rail, light rail and bus), Staten Island Ferry, and The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PATH Rail, AirTrain JFK, and AirTrain Newark). The trip planner can create trips across multiple agencies.

Being able to plan public transit trips in Google Maps makes it easier than ever to take advantage of all that New York has to offer. With this new partnership, users can get detailed itineraries that utilize any MTA services across its 5,000-square mile service area. Itineraries will include three routing options, complete with station locations, schedule times, transfer information, total trip time, and step-by-step walking directions. Icons for MTA train and bus stops will now be visible on Google Maps which heightens awareness of the availability of public transit options for users who are exploring an area; when clicked, the icons will display the routes serving the stop and upcoming departures. Additionally, when a user searches for driving directions within the MTA service area, a public transit itinerary will appear as an alternative. Need directions while on-the-go? Transit routing is also available on many mobile phones via Google Maps for mobile.

The MTA joins more than 75 other transit agencies spanning 12 countries that have joined the Google Transit program. To learn more about today’s announcement, head to maps.google.com/nyc.

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New Collection of iGoogle Themes Created by Leading Fashion Designers and Musicians

Announcement
September 10, 2008

Hi there,

Today, Google is introducing a new collection(www.google.com/artistthemes) of iGoogle themes created by leading fashion designers and musicians. This new collection is an extension of the iGoogle artist project that launched in May(googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-art-thou.html), where we originally collaborated with almost 70 artists from 17 countries to create themes for iGoogle.

You can refer to the blog post below for more details. However, if you’re interested in finding out more information about the project, we’d be happy to set up some time for you to speak with Michaela Prescott, Product Marketing Manager at Google. Thanks.

googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-eye-candy-for-igoogle.html

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Google Completes Sale of Performics Search Marketing Business

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (September 10, 2008) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has completed its sale of the Performics search marketing business to Publicis Groupe (EURONEXT Paris: FR0000130577). Chicago-based Performics, one of the leading search marketing services providers, helps to improve the performance of advertisers’ investments and maximize client campaign effectiveness.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top Web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall Web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Investor Contact:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650-253-7663
marias@google.com

Media Contact:

Andrew Pederson
Corporate Communications
650-214-6228
andrewpederson@google.com

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NBC Universal and Google Form Strategic Advertising Partnership

NBCU Cable to Implement Google TV Ads Advertising Platform

Google to Bring New Advertising Clients to Television

Partnership Includes Collaboration on Custom Research Projects to Help Drive New Insights into TV Advertising

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (September 8, 2008) – As part of its continuing effort to offer innovative advertising solutions to its clients, NBC Universal (NBCU) will join forces with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to form a strategic multi-year advertising, research and technology partnership. The two companies will work together to develop more effective advertising metrics, attract non-traditional advertising partners to NBCU and incorporate self-service buying opportunities through the Google TV Ads™ advertising platform.

The announcement was made today by Mike Pilot, President, NBC Universal Sales and Marketing and Tim Armstrong, Google’s President of Advertising and Commerce, North America.

On the national level, NBCU will offer advertising time from several of its cable networks to Google’s TV Ads platform. Inventory from Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller will be made available to Google in the coming months, with potential to expand onto other NBCU properties in the future. With the addition of NBC Universal inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can reach NBCU Cable’s national audience and gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale. With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaign to maximize their ROI.

“We’re extremely pleased to join forces with Google on this effort, which will help us develop better accountability and ROI metrics for our advertisers and attract an entirely new group of clients to television advertising,” said Pilot. “This is another step in our commitment to trying innovative advertising approaches and testing new technologies that can help benefit our clients.”

“The Google TV Ads platform is making television advertising more accountable and measurable and we’re pleased with our progress to date,” said Armstrong. “Our partnership with NBCU will help us bring the power of television to a broader set of advertisers as well as give our current advertisers increased reach through our system.”

On the local level, NBCU and Google have also agreed to work jointly on adapting the Google TV Ads platform for local market use.

“This is a great way to reach clients who are interested in buying television advertising but may not have previously had the resources or ability to do so,” said Frank Comerford, President, Platform Development and Commercial Operations, NBC Local Media. “A self-service ad platform will be a great complement to our existing sales efforts and help us further connect our clients to their customers.”

As part of the agreement, NBC Universal will maintain its direct relationships with agencies and advertisers and can set parameters around the purchase of the available ad time. NBCU will also gain access to the large base of advertisers using Google’s AdWords™ online advertising program, many of whom are not currently television advertisers. The two companies will share in all ad revenue and explore innovative ways to expand the partnership in the future, including adapting the platform to add local inventory.

As part of their effort to help drive value for advertisers, NBCU and Google will also collaborate on a series of custom marketing and research projects using the Google TV Ads platform. Through its partnership with DISH Network, the Google TV Ads platform can report second-by-second set top box data allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely than ever before. The two companies will also take advantage of joint research that will help advertisers and agencies better understand their media mix and optimize their ad campaigns.

"We’re pleased that NBCU will make some of its inventory available on Google’s TV Ads platform," said Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group. "The partnership will generate real value for our clients by providing us with a more measurable—and actionable—understanding of how consumers engage with content."

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About NBC Universal

NBC Universal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and 20% owned by Vivendi.

NBC Universal Media Contact:

Liz Fischer
212-664-4825
liz.fischer@nbcuni.com

Google’s Media Contact:

Brandon McCormick
212-565-3674
press@google.com

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Google, Google AdWords, and Google TV Ads are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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Google Chrome: A New Take on the Browser

New Open Source Browser Combines Simple User-Interface with Sophisticated Technology

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (September 2, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today launched Google Chrome™, a new open source browser intended to create a better web experience for users around the world. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

In the early days of the Internet, web pages were frequently little more than text. But today the web has evolved into a powerful platform that enables users to collaborate with friends and colleagues through email and other web applications, edit documents, watch videos, listen to music, manage finances and much more. Google Chrome was built for today’s web and for the applications of tomorrow.

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience," said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, Google Inc. "Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web."

Making the web experience better for users

Google Chrome was designed to make it easy for users to search and navigate the web for the content they’re looking for.

• A combined search and address bar quickly takes users where they want to go, often in just a few keystrokes.
• When users open a new tab in Google Chrome, they’ll see a page that includes snapshots of their most-visited sites, recent searches and bookmarks, making it even easier to navigate the web.

Google Chrome was engineered to deliver a seamless web experience for users. At its core is a multi-process platform that helps provide users with enhanced stability and security.

• Each browser tab operates as a separate process; by isolating tabs, should one tab crash or misbehave, others remain stable and responsive, and users can continue working without having to restart Google Chrome.
• Google also built a new JavaScript engine, V8, which not only speeds up today’s web applications, but enables a whole new class of web applications that couldn’t exist on today’s browsers.

Contributing to the innovation of browsers through openness

"While we see this as a fundamental shift in the way people think about browsers, we realize that we couldn’t have created Google Chrome on our own,” said Linus Upson, Director of Engineering, Google Inc. “Google Chrome was built upon other open source projects that are making significant contributions to browser technology and have helped to spur competition and innovation.”

To further advance the openness of the web, Google Chrome is being released as an open source project under the name Chromium. The intent is that Google will help make future browsers better by contributing the underlying technology in Google Chrome to the market, while continuing to develop additional features.

How to get Google Chrome

Google Chrome can be downloaded at www.google.com/chrome. It is being released in beta for Windows in over 100 countries in the following languages: Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Turkish, English (US), English (UK), Arabic, Czech, Danish, Hebrew, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Indonesian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Estonian.

Google Chrome for Mac and Linux users will be available in the coming months. For more information on the open source project, Chromium, visit www.chromium.org.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For screen shots or b-roll, visit www.google.com/chrome/press.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Media Contact:

Erin Fors
650-930-3555
press@google.com

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New Picasa 3.0 Takes Photo Sharing From "Easy" To "Effortless"; Upgraded Picasa Web Albums Now Focuses on the People In Your Pictures

Announcement

September 2, 2008

As people buy more expensive digital cameras in hopes of taking better pictures and sharing more photos with friends and family, many have discovered that a few all-too-familiar problems won’t go away no matter how many megapixels you buy – like clunky PC utilities that seem determined to take the fun out of photography, and labor-intensive photo-sharing sites that feel like a chore unto themselves.

So today, Google is launching a one-two combo of Picasa 3.0 (beta), the next generation of its free photo-editing software, alongside a major technology upgrade to its free online photo-sharing site, Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa Web Albums now helps users automatically sort and share their online photos based on who’s in each picture. Instead of requiring you to painstakingly label your photos one-by-one, the ‘name tags’ feature in Picasa Web Albums uses advanced clustering technology to quickly group together pictures of the same person. And new features in Picasa 3 make getting your photos online easier than ever, with a one-click ‘web sync’ that uploads an album and keeps it updated on the web when you make changes on your PC. Technophobes and photography buffs alike will find new ways to have fun with their photo collections and unlock the full potential of their digital cameras – producing great-looking photos that can be shared in a snap.

Picasa Web Albums (picasaweb.google.com) is fast and easy photo sharing from Google. Picasa Web Albums now features a remodeled user interface, and uses new technology to help you organize and share photos with the people you care about most:

Advanced ‘name tags’: Since people matter so much in your pictures, Picasa Web Albums has a brand-new feature called ‘name tags’ that helps you quickly and easily identify the people in each of your photos. If you assign name tags to a few faces in your collection, Picasa Web Albums will help you automatically find other photos with the same people so you can quickly tag your whole collection. That way, you can do things like create a special album for your grandmother that includes only photos of the two of you, create a slideshow featuring a select group of friends, or quickly share party photos with all the people who appear in your snapshots.

Share easily, no strings attached: You can share full-resolution albums for free with friends and family. Your uncle won’t need need to sign up for an account to see your photos; the link he receives contains an embedded key so he can view your photos with one click. Web albums are viewable as gorgeous, full-window slideshows – free of ads or distractions – that load in the background so you can flip quickly from one photo to the next. You can allow visitors to download full-resolution albums to Picasa with one click – perfect for family members who would like to print out pictures at home. You and your visitors can also directly order prints and photo gifts from not just one, but multiple retailers, like Walgreens and Snapfish.

Explore the world in pictures:A new ‘Explore’ section gives users a way to enjoy photos published by other Google Photos users around the world, including a ‘Where in the World’ game in which you guess the mystery locales of geo-tagged photos.

Picasa 3.0 beta (picasa.google.com) is free desktop software for Windows that helps you organize, print, and creatively edit your photos. Picasa also integrates seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums for sharing your photos online – with just one click in Picasa 3, you can sync albums from your PC to the web, so that any changes or additions you make on your PC are automatically reflected on your web gallery. New tools in Picasa 3 help you make professional-looking edits without any technical knowledge, including:

• A drag-and-drop photo-collage tool gives you total freedom over layout and content

• A powerful retouching brush to wipe out scratches and blemishes, and repair old photos.

• A slideshow movie maker that uploads to YouTube with a click

• Auto red-eye removal

• Smart auto-cropping that guides you on how to zoom in on your subject

• A fast-launching Photo Viewer to quickly inspect and manipulate images while in the Windows filesystem

As always, Picasa automatically finds and sorts the photos on your hard drive, and lets you drag and drop photos into folders or add custom tags. It leaves your original files undisturbed on your hard drive, so you don’t have to worry about overwriting or altering your originals – you can go back a year later and undo any edits you’ve made. And you can always download all your photos out of Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa 3.0 is available for free download at picasa.google.com, and Picasa Web Albums is available for free sign-up at picasaweb.google.com.

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Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Now Showing: Video in Google Apps

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (September 2, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced Google Video™ for business, a new application in Google Apps™ for sharing video in an organization in two easy steps – simply upload a video to Google Apps, and then invite others to view it. With Google Video for business, anyone can upload a video – on anything ranging from executive communications to product training to trip reports – and share it securely with individuals or the entire company. Google Video for business is now available as part of Google Apps Premier Edition at no additional cost.

"YouTube™ has enabled millions of consumers to easily capture and share video at an unprecedented level, yet corporate video has remained expensive and complicated," said Dave Girouard, president of enterprise, Google. "With Google Video for business, our customers get the ease of YouTube combined with the simple and secure sharing of Google Apps."

With Google Video for business, companies can leverage the power and intimacy of video to communicate all flavors of corporate information including:

• Leadership communications such as business updates and corporate announcements
• Training and how-to videos to share product knowledge and business expertise
• Customer insight derived from site visits, interviews, or focus groups
• Social videos that evangelize relevant activity and initiatives across an organization

"Productivity and other improvements driven by the telephone over the last hundred years, and email within the last 20, will now continue with broad use of video in the business environment," said Manesh Patel, chief information officer and senior vice president of IT, Sanmina-SCI. "Cost and complexity have until now limited the effective use of video to improve business functions. The integration of video into Google Apps, combined with continuing improvements in video devices and network infrastructure, provides significant opportunities for innovation and saving throughout our global teams."

Sharing video is as simple as clicking "browse" to find a video and "upload" to start sharing. Google Apps gives video owners multiple controls for sharing videos such as:

• share videos with individuals, groups, or the entire organization
• add descriptions and tags
• embed videos in any internal web page, including Google Sites

Viewers across the organization can:

• search for any video to which they have access
• view high-quality video from popular browsers (including Safari on iPhone)
• submit ratings, comments and additional tags
• optionally download videos for viewing offline or on portable devices

Google Video for business is available now in English to Google Apps Premier Edition accounts at no additional cost. Each Google Apps Premier Edition domain gets 3GB of Video storage per user account. Existing Premier Edition administrators can enable Google Video for business immediately from the Google Apps control panel. A version for Google Apps Education Edition customers that allows faculty and staff to upload and share videos with students will be available on September 8 for free trial until March 9, 2009, at which point it will cost $10 per user, per year.

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations. With Google Apps, users can use tools such as Gmail™ webmail service, Google Talk™ instant messaging service, Google Calendar™ calendaring service, Google Docs™ program, Google Sites™ web application, the Start Page for creating a customizable homepage, and now Google Video for business on their own domain to work together more effectively. To sign up for Google Apps or learn more, please visit www.google.com/a

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.google.com.

Media Contact:

Andrew Kovacs
650.253.8899
akovacs@google.com

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Google, Google Video, Google Apps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sites are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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