Last month, a handful of privacy groups urged Google to add a link to its privacy policy on its home page, in accordance with California law.

Google said it interpreted the law differently.

Google resisted doing so in part because every bit counts when determining how quickly its home page loads, given that load speed and user satisfaction are strongly related.

The company probably also wanted to avoid giving outsiders the idea that they can force design changes by complaining.

In a blog post, Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, said that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin would agree to the change only if the number of the words on the home page (28) remained unchanged. So the word “Google” was dropped because it was implied.

“Today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies,” said Mayer. “Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles.”

So as we can all see, Google replaced the unnecessary “©2008 Google” copyright notice at the bottom of its home page with a privacy link.

Though the copyright symbol and date remain, the bottom text now reads “©2008 – Privacy.”

Well done, Google.

Starting today in the U.S., users of BlackBerry smartphones should begin noticing a number of improvements to their Google search results. Google has tailored its software to better accommodate the BlackBerry Web browser.

Google has been on a roll lately with customized phone support. It goes to greater and greater lengths to make sure each mobile phone platform has what it needs to view and use Google’s mobile services better.

Google has, for example, rolled out some seriously customized versions of its services for the iPhone, which has different usability characteristics than many other phones.

Now, Google has turned its attention to BlackBerry users, specifically the browser.

The Official Google Mobile Blog spells out what it has done:

1. Improved comprehensiveness: Our mobile search now incorporates results from Product Search, Blog Search, News archives search, and more.
2. Blended results: Instead of showing you web, image, local and news results in separate sections, we now combine them to improve relevance. We’ve also made it easier for you to focus your search on any one of these categories — notice how the links are now placed at the top of the results page.
3. Longer snippets: Web results include longer snippets so that your answer may be right on the results page.
4. Related searches: At the bottom of the search results page, you’ll find a list of related searches to help you refine a query.

According to Google, these changes reflect its desktop search results pages. I was not able to test the new enhancements on my BlackBerry to confirm that.

Feel free to check it out for yourself and share your experience in the comments below.

You may also watch a video demonstration here.

Google’s only goal: Improve user experience. How does it do that?

According to Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google, Search Quality, it is a heck of a lot of work. Google improves its search algorithms an average of nine times per week. Here’s why.

Google’s Udi Manber published a massive blog post about what exactly is going on behind Google’s closed doors. It is an interesting read. I invite you to check the entire post out here.

Below are some points I thought were most interesting. Read the rest of this entry…

Doing some research on Pirates this evening, I stumbled upon an interesting gem of a website called Google Pirate.

The concept behind the site? Use the power of Google to scour every corner of the internet for exactly what you need:

I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!

This is definitely a useful website for many reasons… but before you fear (the reaper) getting your “Arrr” on, take a look at the legal disclaimer from the Google Pirate website:

This website is completely compliant with the DMCA. Before you send off emails, be aware that this site has a legal use and does not condone copyright infringement or intellectual theft in any way. This website does not contain any illegal material, nor does it even contain direct links to illegal material. It is designed using Google’s Custom Search tools to narrow search results down to filetypes to remove unwanted sites that aren’t related to the client’s search.

This website is not affiliated with Google. “Google” is a trademarked name of Google Inc. “Google Pirate” is not a trademark name/url and is only named such due to the relevancy of the word Google.

The use of the word “Pirate” does not imply that we condone piracy. Its simply because we think pirates are awesome.

I completely agree, Pirates are awesome and in times like this, I remember the words of Bruce Dickinson:

“Easy, guys… I put my pants on just like the rest of you – one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.”

I’m telling you – you’re gonna want that cowbell on the track! Babies.. before we’re done here.. y’all be wearing gold-plated diapers.

What does that mean you’re asking yourself? Never question Bruce Dickinson! Roll it!

In Memoriam: Gene Frenkle: 1950-2000