Source: John Koetsier

The actual, real, live fire pole.

Like a full regulation fire pole that people can actually use to drop down a floor. Or an officially certified slide to get down to the lobby after a long day. Perhaps a cushioned and enclosed chill room.

Or even, believe it or not, a cattle walkway.

On a recent trip through Ontario, I toured Google’s first office in Canada — and talked to the engineer who leads Google Canada, a former startup guy in Silicon Valley and native Canuck, Steve Woods. If you use mobile Gmail, a Chromebook, Google Maps, Google Calendar, or Google Fiber, there’s a good chance you’ve touched something built at Google’s offices in Waterloo, Ontario.

And if you ever get the opportunity, those offices are definitely something to touch as well.

“Startups are great, because you start from scratch,” Woods says. “Startups are awful, because you start from scratch. At Google, you can literally launch a project that affects a billion people.”

That’s one reason he decided to accept Google’s offer to leave the Valley, return home, and “figure out what we should do in Canada and do it.”

In 2008, when Google opened the office, Waterloo and London were the company’s two centers of mobile excellence — likely due to Waterloo’s proximity to then-leading smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry. So Waterloo and London pioneered the mobile version of virtually every service Google offers: Maps, Gmail, Calendar, mobile search, and more. Waterloo, which now boasts about 200 engineers, also hosts the team that built Google Fiber’s user interface and critical software for the Chrome Pixel, Google’s answer to Apple’s retina display, with full touch integration.

The office is located in a formerly industrial building that once housed a tannery, believe it or not (hence the cattle walkway). Google shares it with a number of accelerators, startups, and coworking spaces that together make up Communitech, a startup mecca with strong connections to Waterloo University, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

Source: John Koetsier

The Googlers who work here. After a year, their drawing gets colored in.

Woods, whose recruiting strategy is to get ex-patriate Canadians to move back as well as to draw new talent from the nearby Waterloo University, says that it’s an attractive place for Googlers for a variety of reasons — not just the fire pole or massage room.

“There’s fewer bosses here, or at least they can’t find you,” he jokes. “At least a third of the people here have moved back from California.”

Source: John Koetsier

The actual cattle walkway

Woods says that Google’s most internally unpopular and controversial product ever was built in Waterloo as well: Conversion Optimizer. That’s a piece of software for advertising buyers that Google calls the “just trust us and push the button button,” which essentially hands your advertising campaign over to Google to optimize for the cheapest and most effective ads.

“It was extremely unpopular in Google,” Woods told me. “People were wondering: How much money will we lose? They were worried that advertisers would optimize their ad spend early in the month, hit their caps, and stop buying.”

Google’s known for taking risks, however, and the company ultimately decided to go ahead despite the chance it might actually lose money. Now, the product is one of Google’s most popular for advertisers, and it manages “many, many billions of dollars.”

“It took a Nobel prize-winning economist to prove that was untrue,” Woods said. “It’s great for Google, great for advertisers, and great for surfers.”

And another product Waterloo build that Woods is particularly proud of is what he calls “the largest project Google has ever done.”

It’s the first mobile search transcoder, which was an infrastructure that rendered web pages on Google’s own internal servers, decided which bits were most important for mobile phone web users, and sent only those bits. It sounds like something for the presmartphone days of historical antiquity, but not so.

“It’s still a very fast-growing project,” Woods told me. “The volume is staggering … billions of pages per day in countries in the third world, and even in the U.S., it’s still growing.”

So … why in Waterloo, Ontario?

Source: John Koetsier

Communitech, the community in the building that includes Google.

“Something interesting is happening here,” Woods says. “The university produces an amazing kind of talent … and people that come into Google from the University of Waterloo do disproportionately well.”

Worldwide, he says, Waterloo has been one of Google’ top three or four recruiting centers for some years now. And, he adds, not everyone who wants to work for Google wants to live in California.

“This area has a very high proportion of startups to population,” he adds. “Google loves startups, and we love to hire entrepreneurial people.”

Oh, and the slide?

The office has a plastic red slide down from the second-floor Google reception area to the first-floor entrance. It has a prominent sign, “For Googlers Only,” which a PR rep told me was placed there because Ontario’s provincial slide inspector (yes, they have one, apparently) raised some concerns about safety.

I was bad, however, as I frequently am, and went down the slide anyways. The PR rep forgave me, as you can see in the video below:

Image credits: John Koetsier

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It figures. As soon as I learn to love Google Calendar’s appointment slots feature, the company decides it is a “less-popular feature” and discontinues it.

Calendar appointment slots are one of a slew of features that Google is sunsetting today, as part of its “winter cleaning” of less-used or less-than-successful features. Among those features was Punchd, which Google paid $10 million to acquire a little more than a year ago.

Appointment slots was a handy feature that let you set up blocks of time when people could reserve appointments with you — like office hours. It was a little hard to figure out, however, and Google’s user interface didn’t make it any easier to navigate. Plus, it was buried: it always took me five or ten minutes to figure out where to click in order to get to it. So it’s probably no surprise that it’s now gone. (Technically, you can still create appointment slots until Jan. 4, and any slots you’ve created before then will remain open for a year after that.)

Also gone as of Jan. 4: Calendar syncing through Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync. “With the recent launch of CardDAV, Google now offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV, making it possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols,” Google wrote on its blog.

Also, it might have added: Screw you, Microsoft.

Google is also ending a few other sync tools: Google Calendar Sync (another ActiveSync-based tool), sync for Symbian S60, and SyncML support.

The company is also discontinuing Punchd, an app that lets you keep your loyalty cards on a smartphone. Google acquired Punchd for a reported $10 million in July, 2011. Punchd will be removed from the Google Play store on June 7, 2013. This leaves Google without a way to help you keep track of how many free lattes you have earned at the local coffee shop, but it might add loyalty card support to Google Wallet in the future.

We all have busy lives and dread those time-sucking email chains between friends to find a time to meet for dinner.

Launching today, Calclash has developed a simple website that integrates with your Google calendars. When your friends sign up, the site will be able to automatically determine the best time to meet.

The startup was founded this year by cofounders Andrew Antar and Jordan Berg, who met at Brown University. They have been beta testing the product at their alma mater over the summer. Given the positive feedback, they made the decision to pursue the company full-time and relocate to Silicon Valley.

“I had a eureka moment some time ago that I could design an app that automatically gives you the best free meeting times once everyone puts in their calendar information,” said Antar in an interview with VentureBeat. Berg, a computer science grad, hacked the first version of the site in several days and has been working to perfect the product ever since.

The founders have poured their own time and resources into the site. As it continues to grow, they’ll need to find a way to make money, likely by creating a premium service for small businesses (this product would need to integrate with Outlook’s calendar). It’s a promising space: Seattle-based Schedulista, the brainchild of former Google engineers, turned its first profit this spring and has found a niche by catering to hair salons, accountants, legal practices, and other small businesses.

The market for online scheduling is increasingly flooded, but no one leader has emerged. Doodle, a popular choice, allows you to set up a poll to find out when friends are free. Needtomeet and timetomeet also offer a quick and dirty calendar-syncing service. To really stand out, the company will need to create a simple-to-use mobile version so friends can arrange a time to meet on the go.

According to Antar, what’s unique about Cal Clash is its full calendar view, “instead of a weird timetable that the competitors offer.” Another cool feature is that you can drag and drop in busy times, just like your regular calendar, which is more intuitive than blocking free time.

It’s early days for the company, but I’m curious about whether this useful little web application can go.

Image via Shutterstock

Searching Gmail sucks, and we all know it. Google knows it too, which is why the company released an “expanded” search feature today that not only helps you find emails within Gmail but also pulls relevant results into Google searches.

“When you’re looking for something, you should be able to find what you need quickly and easily without needing to think about where it might be, whether it’s in your email or out on the public web,” Google software engineer Bran Moolenaar said in a blog post.

The company originally released a field trial of a new search bar in Gmail this past August. It allows users to see relevant emails right in the search bar as they type in keywords. The new feature gives you relevant emails, but also Google calendar events, as well as Google Drive files.

If you want to be a part of the field test, go here.

If you are out on the public web and are logged into your Gmail account, you’ll be able to see Gmail data there too. Any emails, documents, or calendar events related to your Google search will show up in a box to the side of your search results.

Let’s just hope no weird emails show up when a friend is watching you search for “babies eating lemons.”

Binoculars image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sometimes very small changes can make a big difference. That’s the case with the one change I’d love for Google to make to Google Calendar.

Over the years, Google Calendar has become my default calendaring tool. I use it on the Web and have the calendar on my Android phone. I set up my iPhone with Google as an Exchange server, so I also get Google’s calendar there.

But every time I add a new event, I am annoyed that the “Where” field doesn’t do a type-ahead drop-down with suggestions from Google’s extensive places database. In the absence of that feature, I usually do one of two things: I open Google Maps in a separate window, look up the place and then copy the address into the Where field. Or, I get lazy, and type in a name or some approximation of the place name. In that case, the recipient has to do the work of looking it up. Sometimes this imprecision results in confusion because there may be multiple venues nearby. (Who hasn’t showed up at the Starbucks across the street from the one you intended?)

If Google were to do auto-completion in the Where field, as it does when you search Google Maps, you would more easily be able to specify a precise location. There would be no confusion.

From a technology standpoint, it’s easily doable. And I bet it would be used much more frequently than the “Add a Google+ hangout” link below it.

The simple change would have an immediate benefit in terms of user experience. In addition to saving time on data entry and eliminating potential confusion, it would make navigation easier. When I’m headed off to a meeting, I’d have a GPS-ready destination already attached to my calendar entry. With Google’s new Now feature in the latest, “Jelly Bean” version of Android, my phone could automatically alert me when it’s time to leave for my meeting, based on traffic conditions.

Although Google Calendar usage is small compared with other Google products, it still reaches 8.6 million visitors a month, according to comScore. Those users are loyal, visiting the site 61 million times in September.

This small change could lead to a lot of other benefits that could be built in over time, both for consumers and for Google:

• Google could suggest venues based on the number of people invited. I’m having dinner with 6 people; here are a few places that can accommodate that.
• When I receive an invitation, Google could calculate whether it’s reachable based on the distance from my previous appointment. If I have a 2 p.m. meeting in Palo Alto, I can’t make a 3 p.m. in San Francisco.
• Google could validate locations against the times that a place is open. I’ve had people schedule meetings with me at restaurants that turned out to be closed on Sundays. With the data about venues in Google Places, Google could reduce this kind of error. If the user goes ahead and uses the location anyway, it could be an indication to Google that the business’s hours have changed.
• Likewise, if a place recently went out of business, Google could warn me ahead of time, when I’m trying to schedule an appointment there.
• Google could collect newly opened venues. If I enter a place that isn’t in the database, it could prompt me to add it. (There needs to be a provision for private venues, such as my home.)
• Google could use data from many users to learn about a venue. For example, this is a place for business meetings or friendly hangouts.
• The data could be used as an implicit rating. If I keep going back to a place, it probably doesn’t suck. Although it’s unlikely that I’ll write multiple reviews for a place, the fact that I keep going back there is an ongoing, implicit endorsement.
• It would serve as viral marketing for Google Maps. Each calendar invite could include the full address, as well as a link to the places page on Google.
• It would help to build a graph connecting people with places. With permission, a business could publish their regulars on their Google+ Local page.

This small change is an important point of integration that can drive a lot of value. Although this example is Google-centric, I frequently find such compelling integration opportunities in other products. Do you have any in yours?

photo credit: Mary-Lynn via photopin

Judging from what we’re seeing in the new Calendar today, I’m excited to see what Google comes up with for other services, especially Gmail. Now that Calendar’s refresh is rolling out, we can expect other Google services to be coming out soon.

In addition to an overall visual change, Google streamlined other aspects of Calendar’s interface. Among the changes, calendar lists on the left side of the screen are now collapsed by default (which just looks neater), visual indicator icons only appear when you hover over calendar events, and the Print and Refresh buttons are now icons instead of links.

Google offers the ability to jump back to the classic Calendar look — but why would you want to?

The company says the design changes were made with its three new design principles in mind: focus, elasticity, and effortlessness. Google announced its new design imitative on Tuesday following Google+’s launch. Basically, the company is now focusing on making its interfaces less cluttered, easily transitioned from desktop and mobile devices, and combining power with simplicity. The latter may not sound too different from the minimalist Google interfaces that we’ve grown used to, but judging from the visual flourishes in Google+ and the eye-pleasing changes in Calendar, it seems like Google is finally paying more attention to aesthetics rather than being completely pragmatic in its designs.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) announced this morning that it has acquired Tungle.me, a calendar scheduling application, for an undisclosed sum of money.

Tungle.me, which launched at DEMO in 2007, offers a service to synchronize and schedule meetings across various calendaring applications — including Microsoft’s Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple iCal. Additionally, it helps prevent timezone and double-booking conflicts, and integrates with devices such as Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s own BlackBerry.

The service has managed to build a fair amount of traction since launching, currently put into use by 40 percent of Fortune 1000 companies and over 800 universities around the world.

While RIM has yet to mention what it plans to do with the service, the company is most likely going to keep it running in its current form, going by its similar past acquisitions of Gist, an e-mail contact manager, and DataViz, a document platform for Outllook.

The Montreal, Canada-based startup was founded by Marc Gingras. It raised $6.36 million over two funding rounds, with investors that included Desjardins Venture Capital, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and JLA Ventures.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Now it wants to take over your company’s start-page — This latest tool is for companies using Google’s online applications. Details here. Of couple, this sounds a lot like the “start” button on Windows. Which makes sense, since everyone knows now that Microsoft is Google’s real target.

Google hires the founders of IRows, an AJAX spreadsheet company in Israel — The story is here.

YouTube was in pretty desperate financial shape at time of Google acquisition — Schmidt and the media have tangled over the facts, but finally there’s a little more clarity. YouTube needed cash.

Can you download YouTube videos or not? — This question still hasn’t been answered, and it will plague GooTube until it is resolved. Here’s the latest: YouTube’s lawyers send a cease and desist email to Techcrunch, for posting a tool that lets users download videos from YouTube and put them on their video iPods.

Google calendar lets sites embed an event search bar widget — Here are the details. We’re wondering what this means for start-ups like Zvents, which just raised $7 million in venture to distribute its own events search. We’ll be talking with Zvents soon. See Gigaom‘s take.

Google continues tussle over click-fraud — Earlier this week, VentureBeat reported on ClickFacts, a company serving a company that is criticizing Google for ignoring what it says is proof that click-fraud is committed on his ads. Google responded to our piece, sending reports suggesting ClickFacts itself is flawed. ClickFacts, in turn, fights bank, implying Google is being disingenuous.

Google introduces click-to-call — This is a very useful service. You do a search for a business, bar or restaurant. Google will give the result with a map next to it. Switch over to maps, and then click on the word “call” next to listing. Google will connect you. Explanation here. Graphic at left.