UK government scraps the paper car tax disc after more than 90 years

Almost a century after its introduction, the UK government is set to scrap the paper car disc and go all in with its electronic register. According to the BBC, its death was confirmed by the UK Treasury ahead of Chancellor George Osbornes Autumn Statement later today, meaning motorists will no longer need fix a disc in their car window to prove theyve taxed their car. "This is a visual symbol of how we are moving government into the modern age," says the UK government, which will also announce that vehicle owners can pay for their duty by monthly direct debit as well as the traditional six-month or full-year payment. From October 2014, authorities will identify whether tax has been paid through a cars license plate, allowing it to recoup £7 million in admin costs and save UK drivers the hassle of waiting for that little paper disc to come through the post.

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More movies and TV shows from Twentieth Century Fox coming to Google Play and YouTube

Google Play and YouTube offer the latest new movie releases and your favorite TV shows to enjoy on your Android phone or tablet and on the web. But you’ve been missing one critical thing…Stewie Griffin. We’re happy to share that Stewie, “Family Guy,” and more than 600 other titles from Twentieth Century Fox will soon be joining the catalog for you to rent or buy on Google Play and YouTube.

Today you can buy Fox’s new release Prometheus in HD, available three weeks ahead of the Blu-ray, DVD and video-on-demand release. And over the next few weeks you’ll be able to rent or buy your favorite Fox movies like X-Men, Ice Age and Black Swan, and TV shows like “Glee,” “Modern Family,” “New Girl” and many more.

These new titles will be available first in the U.S., and we’ll be bringing them to more countries soon. We’re now working with all six of the major film studios and many independent studios to bring you the best new releases and your favorite classics to rent or own.

Posted by Jonathan Zepp, Manager of TV & Film Content Partnerships

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Making search more secure

We’ve worked hard over the past few years to increase our services’ use of an encryption protocol called SSL, as well as encouraging the industry to adopt stronger security standards. For example, we made SSL the default setting in Gmail in January 2010 and introduced an encrypted search service located at https://encrypted.google.com four months later. Other prominent web companies have also added SSL support in recent months.

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users. Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate to https://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account.

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but wont receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.

As we continue to add more support for SSL across our products and services, we hope to see similar action from other websites. That’s why our researchers publish information about SSL and provide advice to help facilitate broader use of the protocol. We hope that today’s move to increase the privacy and security of your web searches is only the next step in a broader industry effort to employ SSL encryption more widely and effectively.

Posted by Evelyn Kao, Product Manager

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GoogleServe 2012 More skills based service

This year we celebrated our fifth GoogleServe Global Week of Service—an annual tradition in which Googlers around the world join together in community service projects. Volunteering together helps to revitalize and strengthen our connections with the cities and towns in which we live and work, and also brings us closer together as a global team.

In the past we’ve done hundreds of projects that address local community needs and engage our hearts and hands. This year, inspired by Billion+ Change and Reimagining Service as well as industry research, we focused on incorporating more skills-based projects. Our goal is to use our professional skills to generate more value for the communities we serve and to give Googlers an opportunity to have an even more impactful and fulfilling volunteer experience.

With that in mind, our software engineers developed code to help make math formulas accessible to blind students with Social Coding 4 Good; with the Student Veterans of America recruiters led resume and interviewing skills workshops with veterans; and with the Branson Centre in South Africa sales and business development professionals trained entrepreneurs in online tools to grow and optimize their small businesses.

Overall, more than 5,000 Googlers helped serve their communities across 400+ different projects as part of GoogleServe this year. Here’s a sampling of some of the other projects we participated in:

• We led advertising optimization sessions for nonprofits through the Google Grants program everywhere from Hamburg to Hyderabad and Sydney to San Francisco.
• We held computer literacy classes for community members at the Dog River Library in Atlanta, with the Dublin Simon Community and the Crumlin College in Dublin and with Cambridge Community Television in Cambridge.
• We taught teenagers how to build and maintain websites with Fidel in Tel Aviv, and we conducted arts workshops for youth all over India—with MAD in Gurgaon, the Open Door Foundation in Bangalore and the India Literacy Project in Hyderabad.
• We refurbished computers with FreeGeek in Portland, with reBOOT Canada in Waterloo and with Goodwill Industries in Austin.
• We trained aspiring entrepreneurs with Impulsa in Mexico City and taught self defense and cooking classes for women entrepreneurs with Kamilini in Gurgaon, India.
• With HandsOn Bay Area, we launched a new series of ongoing team-based projects, including software development to improve the Mountain View Whisman School District library information system and career development trainings with Larkin Street Youth Services.
• We developed curriculum to teach physics through pinball at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, Calif. and recorded videos to help inspire girls to pursue science, technology and engineering-related careers with Techbridge in Oakland.

See our Life at Google page for photos of some of our employees and partners in action. While we do set aside a week to focus on serving the communities in which we work and live, giving back is an ongoing effort here at Google. If youd like to join us in using your skills for social good, check out All for Good, for opportunities to give back in your community year-round.

Posted by Seth Marbin, on behalf of the GoogleServe and Googler Social Responsibility Teams

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Making Chrome even more app ealing

From sharing photos, to collaborating on documents, to enjoying online games, web apps make the web fun, useful and entertaining. Since the beginning, Chrome has been designed to allow apps to do more, faster. Today, changes in Chrome make it even easier to access your favorite apps and discover new favorites.

In the latest stable release of Chrome, we’ve completely redesigned the New Tab page. It’s more streamlined, so it’s easier to access and organize your apps in different sections on the page. Watch the video below for a quick tour.



To add more apps to your New Tab page, click the Chrome Web Store icon. The Web Store also has a new look:

Apps and extensions are now presented in a wall of images that’s updated every time you visit the store. We hope this will help you quickly scan the store and find interesting things to try out. In addition, apps and extensions are easier to install—just hover over an image on the grid and click “Add to Chrome.”

Getting additional information about an app or an extension is just a click away. When you click on an app, extension or theme, you’ll see a panel featuring screenshots, videos and other relevant information neatly organized into separate tabs. The store also includes a brand new reviews interface that links to the Google+ profile of each reviewer. (To protect your privacy, we made sure to anonymize any reviews that you previously submitted.)

Along with the new look, a bunch of new apps have joined the store. I’m personally excited about My Robot Nation™, an app that lets you design your own robot and bring it to life with a 3D printer. There are plenty of new games to play, including The Godfather: Five Families and Fieldrunners. And for those of you still looking for a Halloween costume, check out the brand-new eBay shopping app.

We have many more features on deck, and we’re looking forward to making the app experience in Chrome even better soon.

Posted by Shannon Guymon, Product Manager

(Cross-posted from the Chrome Blog)

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