Holiday 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

College football in Sports OneBox

Football fans can now search for game times and scores of their
favorite college teams during the big bowl games coming up. For
example, typing [ncaaf] or [texas football] into the search box will
return game information at the top of the search results page. This is
in addition to the major U.S. leagues for a variety of sports (NFL,
NHL, MLB, MLS, and NBA) and six major European football (aka soccer)
leagues we recently added.
http://www.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Ask the President-elect questions with Google Moderator

U.S. President-elect Obama's transition team is using Google Moderator
to respond to questions on the Change.gov website. You too can get
involved, either by asking a question or by voting on questions you'd
like to have answered.
http://www.change.gov/OpenForQuestions

New Gmail features

View PDF attachments sent to your Gmail account without waiting for
them to download and open in another application. Just click the
"View" link next to any .pdf attachments you receive to view them
right in your browser. Recently we also rolled out Text Messaging
(SMS) in Chat in Gmail. Try both out in your own Gmail account under
the "Labs" tab in "Settings."
http://www.gmail.com

Updates to Picasa

Picasa Web Albums offers a new "Sign-in required to view" setting,
which lets you limit access to specific individuals who have a Picasa
Web Albums account. Additionally, all user comments are now
automatically translated into the viewer's native language using
Google Translate. And if you use Picasa to organize your video
content, you will also notice that most of your videos are now high
quality.
http://picasa.google.com

Daily how-to tips

Throughout the month of December, we published daily tips to make it
easier to use a number of Google products. Visit our countdown site to
learn about search tips and product features you can continue to use
in 2009.
http://www.google.com/countdownto2009

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MISCELLANY

As 2008 comes to a close, we invite you to see what was on the
collective mind as demonstrated by the aggregation of billions of
Google searches from around the globe. It was a wild year with many
momentous events, to say the least, and through it all Google users
kept pace with the U.S. elections, the Summer Games and social
networks (online, at least). Of course, we also made time for
superheroes and super-celebrity breakups, but even those diversions
couldn't take our thoughts away from the world's changing political
and economic landscapes. With so much at stake and so much uncertainty
in the year ahead, it's comforting to know that we are collectively
concerned and "in this together," search-wise.  For more of the year's
highlights, take a look at our Year-End Zeitgeist website.
http://www.google.com/zeitgeist2008