Google Friends Newsletter - December 2007

[Google Friends Newsletter]

Google Friends Newsletter - December 2007

Seasonal greetings and our best wishes for a wonderful new year to all
of our Google friends. We hope you enjoy this month's update on our
products and services.

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POWER TIP

Flight Status Now On Results Page

Our flight stats search feature can now deliver real time status and
info on your flight directly on the search results page. Just type the
name of the airline and flight number (e.g. American 123, ua226) into
the search box, and we'll return the most up to date information from
FlightStats.com.
http://www.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Donate with Google Checkout

Google Checkout's new donation site allows you to help kids achieve
their dreams through The Global Fund for Children, combat global
warming with Clean Air-Cool Planet, or contribute to the fight against
disease and malnutrition with Action Against Hunger. And when you give
through Google Checkout, 100% of your donation will reach the
organization of your choice.
http://www.google.com/checkout/promotions/donations.html

Updates to Google Maps Street View

Google Maps Street View now features eight more cities - Boston,
Dallas, Ft Worth, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Detroit, and
Providence - to expand coverage to 23 U.S. cities. In addition, you
can now easily embed a fully interactive Street View player into your
website or blog, just as you can with a YouTube video.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Gmail Chat integrates with AIM

Gmail users can now log into your AIM account within Gmail and chat
with your AIM buddies just as you do with your Gmail chat buddies -
all with no download required. All your favorite Gmail chat features
(chat history, "always show", smart-sort based on communication
frequency, buddy photos, and status messages) work the same.
http://www.gmail.com

Google Maps for mobile, now with My Location (beta)

GPS-enabled mobile phones continue to rise in popularity - but most of
us do not have that capability. Now, with the latest version of Google
Maps for mobile, you can use the new My Location (beta) technology
that uses normal cell phone towers to provide you with approximate
location information. It's not GPS, but it comes pretty close.
http://www.google.com/gmm

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MISCELLANY

+ Your online privacy +

At the end of August, we wrote here about a YouTube video we made that
explains exactly how we handle personal computer information for every
individual search query. Since then, we've produced some 15 other
short videos -- tips you can use to manage your own information for
Google products including Picasa for photos, Street View in Google
Maps, Blogger, your Google Web History, and more. There's also an
excellent year-end review on privacy protections across the Internet
given by Peter Fleischer, our global privacy counsel. All of these are
available on a new Google Privacy Channel on YouTube. We strongly
believe that you will want to understand the issues surrounding
privacy of information, and make your own choices based on that
understanding. We hope you find these videos useful, and we'll
continue to add new tips on video on this channel, so you may want to
bookmark the page, or subscribe to its feed.
http://www.youtube.com/googleprivacy