The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to stifle innovation. Some of these lawsuits have been filed by people or companies that have never actually created anything; others are motivated by a desire to block competing products or profit from the success of a rival’s new technology. The patent system should reward those who create the most useful innovations for society, not those who stake bogus claims or file dubious lawsuits. It’s for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole.

But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services. Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories.

So after a lot of thought, we’ve decided to bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio in the company’s bankruptcy auction. Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it’s the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners.

Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President & General Counsel

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This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label “This week in search” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

This week we made a few updates to help people around the world access relevant information. We introduced a new +1 button to help you and your friends find the right results at the right time, enhanced financial search results on your mobile phone, added local domains in new countries and introduced Voice Search in new languages.

+1 to share your recommendations with the world
The +1 button is a new, quick way in Google search to say “this is something you should check out.” Click the +1 button to publicly give a search result or an ad your stamp of approval, sharing your recommendation with your friends and contacts so they’ll find it right when they want it. For example, if you recently stayed at a ski lodge that you loved, you can +1 that webpage and your friend will see your +1 when it matters most to him—when he’s searching for a place to stay in Lake Tahoe.

+1’s are slowing rolling out alongside search results and ads in English on Google.com, and in the future they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web). You can try the +1 button now by opting in at http://www.google.com/experimental.

New financial search results on mobile
When you’re checking on the latest in the stock market, you may be interested in seeing more than just stock quotes. This week we updated the search result format for financial results on iPhone and Android-powered devices. You can now interact with the results in new ways to see a company’s performance over various date ranges, and if you swipe the screen from right to left you can see recent financial news for the company, glance at a market overview and check how the stocks in your portfolio are doing. If you currently have your language preference set to English, just go to google.com and search for a stock ticker symbol to see the new format.

Example searches: [TSLA] [F] [NFLX]

Finding similar images
When you’re searching for a picture and find a result that’s close to what you want but not exactly right, you can use “Similar images” to find images that are visually similar to a particular result, so you can get to that perfect result. We’ve updated the index of similar images, so now you’ll find more recent and comprehensive results. Now you can even find similar images for a recent news event, like when Google went Gaga. Try it yourself by hovering over an image search result and clicking the “Similar” link.

Examples:

New Google domains in Iraq and Tunisia
Yesterday we added two new regional domains in the Middle East: google.iq for Iraq and google.tn for Tunisia. The new domains make it easier for people to access Google in their preferred language and also to find locally relevant information. This brings the number of local Google search domains worldwide to 184, with 15 domains in Arab countries.

Voice Search in new languages
This week we introduced Voice Search in Indonesian, Malaysian and Latin American Spanish. With the help of local people in the region, we were able to capture regional accents and conversational speech to more accurately resemble everyday use of the languages. We also made sure to pay attention to languages with different accents, so we could build a version of Voice Search that, for example, could work across the whole of Latin America. With these new additions, Voice Search is now available in over two dozen languages and accents since it first launched in November 2008.

We’re hiring Autocompleters!
On the search team, we’re always looking for new talent. Today, we’re making a big push to expand hiring for Autocompleters. If you happen to be in the market for a new job and have psychic tendencies, we encourage you to consider applying. Watch this video to hear from a real Google Autocompleter.

Posted by Mike Cassidy, Director of Product Management

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With the help of Gmail Motion, we’ve been working faster than ever this week to build new products and celebrate a few existing ones. Here’s a roundup of our most recent efforts:

• Chromercise helps you increase your hands’ strength and dexterity while browsing the web
• YouTube celebrates its 100th anniversary with a flashback to its original homepage and a blog post by President Taft
• Body Browser lets you explore new anatomical terrain
• Look who’s going Google!
• Google Maps now features strange sightings around the world
• Docs Motion follows Gmail Motion into new gestural terrain
• Meow Me Now helps you find kittens near you
• We announce an exciting acquisition
• Seriously great typists may apply to be autocompleters
• gBlimps: the inevitable new ad platform
• New sessions added to Google I/O
• Fans of Mail Goggles should like the Voice-alyzer function in Google Voice
• New display advertising formats take marketers back to the good old days
• It was only a matter of time before Voice Search became available in this language
• ChromeLite is an even faster version of our browser you know and love
• After extensive user testing, we’ll soon be making Comic Sans the default font for all Google properties—get a preview on the search results page
• Travel through time and space to discover things from “then and now” with Google Teleport Search (in Chinese only)
• Tired of life on Earth? Learn more about a Moon loan
• Use Earkut to receive notifications when someone visits your Orkut profile
• A new look for our webmaster team members

It’s been a busy—and frankly, odd—day at Google, but with our finger sweatbands in place and our savvy email-writing moves, we’ll work faster than ever on new and exciting projects.

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