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Pop culture mania
This week Zayn Malik confirmed he is leaving boy band One Direction, sending teens worldwide into a tailspin as they asked (and searched): “Why is Zayn leaving One Direction?” The British star said that he is leaving to “be a normal 22-year-old...out of the spotlight,” which may be tough given there were more than a million searches for him on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rest of the band will go on without him—in fact, search interest in One Direction tours spiked 5x in the U.S. the day of the announcement.

If freaking out about Zayn isn’t your thing, maybe freaking out about “A” is? The mysterious villain of the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars was revealed—sorta—on Tuesday night, leading to hundreds of thousands of searches for the show. We won’t spoil it here, even though it was frankly a little hard to miss amidst the outcry. Let’s just say, the truth is out there. ;)

Finally, it’s barely spring but it’s already time to start thinking about your summer festival agenda. The line-ups of both San Francisco’s Outside Lands and Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festivals were announced this week. The top festival searched in each state breaks down almost exclusively along geographic lines and leaves us wondering: Are Massachusetts residents big Elton John fans?
Taking charge of your health
In a New York Times op-ed, Angelina Jolie revealed that she had undergone surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent cancer. This was the second preventative surgery for Jolie (she wrote about her double mastectomy in 2013), who made this decision because she carries a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, putting her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. There were more than 100,000 searches for Angelina Jolie on Tuesday, and people turned to the web to ask related questions about women’s health and cancer prevention.
Tip of the week
Who says National Puppy Day has to be just once a year? When you’re need of a furry pick-me-up, just ask the Google app “Ok Google, show me pictures of puppies.” Smiles are practically guaranteed.

Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [rural studio] and [izombie]
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Moving from TV fiction to fact, news broke last Saturday that real estate scion Robert Durst had been arrested in connection to several unsolved murders. Durst was the subject of “The Jinx,” the HBO documentary that aired its final episode Sunday night—in which Durst appears to confess to the crimes. Needless to say, though the police said the arrest was not connected to the show, the timing was great for HBO. Search interest in Robert Durst increased by 1,700 percent in the U.S.

Spring fever
March Madness tipped off this week, with fans across the nation rushing to fill out their brackets and come up with excuses to be out of the office. Ten of the top 20 searches yesterday were related to college basketball, and people are turning to search to ask important questions like “Who can beat Kentucky?” (They’re undefeated this season.) And everyone wants to know who President Obama is rooting for: his is the most searched celebrity bracket so far.
If your bracket is already busted, you’ve got something else to be happy about: today marks the first day of spring, and the vernal equinox. Even though it’s still cold or even snowy in some spots today, the arrival of spring has people very excited. There were more than 2 million searches for [vernal equinox] yesterday—even more than searches for [march madness live].

Still, the sun’s position over the Equator isn’t the only celestial event that’s got people searching. On Friday, we’ll see both a Supermoon as well as the only total solar eclipse of the year—the first since 2013. Searches for [solar eclipse glasses] are up more than 2,000 percent as people figure out how to catch a glimpse. And an intense solar storm brought the aurora borealis south on Tuesday night, making the Northern Lights visible as far south as Oregon and as far out as outer space. The green lights lit up search as well as the skies: search interest went up more than 1,250 percent this week!
Good eats
Who says it needs to be hot out to eat ice cream? Dairy Queen kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations on Monday by treating everyone to a free cone, and more than 200,000 searches followed. And it turns out that when it comes to comfort food, ice cream was a better choice this week than the good ol’ blue box. Kraft announced a recall of more than 6 million boxes its classic macaroni and cheese after metal was found in some boxes. There were more than 100,000+ searches for [kraft mac and cheese recall] as people tried to determine whether their pantries were affected.

Tip of the week
Keep up with the NCAA tournament with the Google app. Just say “Ok Google, show me the latest on March Madness” to get real-time scores, in-game and recap videos, and live streams for each game.

Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [heisler beer tv] and [little women reboot]
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A water tank in New York City. Photo by TF Cornerstone

You don’t need to be tied to your desktop to enjoy these fantastic collections. All these images are now available on a device near you with Chrome, Chromecast, Android Wear and your mobile devices. Turn your TV screen into a vibrant backdrop and add some color to your smartwatch with our new Street Art Watch Faces. On your phone or tablet, browse through our partners' new apps to take a tour of Melbourne's famous laneways or visit the multicolored murals in Delhi, Lima and Honolulu.
Wall by Brendan Monroe and Candybird. Photo by Pow! Wow! Hawaii

Street artists have also been using technology to play with their medium. Our collection includes animated “GIF-iti” images by artists like INSA and Cheko. The walls come to life with murals that are painted, filmed, and re-painted to create captivating moving images.
GIF-iti by Cheko

So much goes into making a piece of street art. Yet its transient nature puts it at risk of being scrubbed out and lost forever. The Google Art Project allows these works of art to transcend the walls, be transported to your screen and live on. Follow @googleart to discover more.

Posted by Lucy Schwartz, Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute
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Though they were introduced in 1985, domain names didn’t gain much awareness and use amongst the public until the World Wide Web became available to all during the ‘90s and it became clear they were an important part in unlocking its power. Using these online addresses, people began to spread messages, start businesses and access information that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to find. Popularity and demand for these names grew so much that people were soon willing to pay millions of dollars for the perfect one.
Today there are 270+ million registered domain names; in fact, about 17 million were added just last year. To create more naming options for people online, hundreds of new top-level domains are being added, and many, like .TODAY, .NINJA and .BIKE are already available. We wrote about this back in 2012, and since then we’ve launched three of our own: .HOW, .SOY and .みんな.
As .COM turns 30, we’re looking back on the history of domain endings and all they’ve made possible. Today there are more choices than ever before for people to find the perfect name for their businesses, projects and ideas on the web. If you’re interested in learning more about this history, or you’d like to register your own piece of the web, head over to Google Domains to claim your .DOMAINS from a .COM to a .GURU.
Here’s to .COM’s 30th, and all that’s yet to come in how we name destinations on the Internet.

Posted by Ben Fried, CIO


You know who else is excited right now? College kids, thanks to a little annual tradition called spring break. Students are all packed up and ready to hit the sun-drenched beaches of Panama City and South Padre Island, and searches for last-minute destinations and travel suggestions are heating up.

Boiling over
Ferguson, Mo., is in the headlines again, and the reasons aren’t getting any better. First, the city’s police chief resigned following an investigation into his department that found evidence of racism. Then, two police officers were shot and injured during a demonstration at the Ferguson Police Department. Both officers are out of the hospital, but no arrests have been made, and protests are erupting in a city still traumatized by recent events—stirring people to get on the web to find the latest updates and causing sustained interest in the small city.

Imitation is the sincerest form of payment
Musicians Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of plagiarism after a jury determined that the duo infringed on soul singer Marvin Gaye’s track “Got to Give it Up” in 2013’s summer jam “Blurred Lines.” The artists were hit with a whopping $7.4 million fine and generated 200,000+ searches. Some are already deriding the decision as a vote against creative expression and a terrible precedent to set for the music industry. But the fight is far from over as both Thicke and Williams plan to appeal the verdict.


Tip of the week
This spring break, skip the overpriced frozen pina coladas and jello shots and make your own cocktails with help from Google. Just say, “Okay Google, how do I make a Snakebite?” and you’ll be making tips in no time.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [there’s a lot more to life than being good looking] and [spring breakers]

Safe Browsing gives users—both on Google and across on the web—information they need to steer clear of danger. The dangerous sites detected by Safe Browsing generally fall into two categories: sites that attack users intentionally with either malware, phishing, or unwanted software that is deceptive or hard to uninstall, or sites that attack users unintentionally because they have been compromised, often without the site’s owner realizing this has happened.

Once we detect these sites, Safe Browsing warns people about them in a variety of ways. You’ve probably come across a warning like this in Chrome, Firefox or Safari; it’s powered by Safe Browsing:
Today, Safe Browsing shows people more than 5 million warnings per day for all sorts of malicious sites and unwanted software, and discovers more than 50,000 malware sites and more than 90,000 phishing sites every month. If you’re interested, you can see information about the dangerous sites that are detected by this technology anytime in our Safe Browsing Transparency Report.

We also use Safe Browsing technology to warn website owners or operators about issues with their sites so they can quickly fix them. We provide basic site maintenance tips, as well as specific Safe Browsing notifications in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Often site owners don’t realize there are issues with their sites until they get these notifications.

Recent developments
Since its earliest days, Safe Browsing has been widely available, and free—for users, site owners, and other companies—to use and integrate into their own products. In the early days, we focused on detecting dangerous sites and then showing people warnings:

An early Safe Browsing notification, c. 2007. These would appear in the top right corner of people’s web browsers when they visited a site that had been flagged by Safe Browsing as potentially dangerous.

But, just as attacks become more sophisticated, we’ve made sure our own technologies have kept up. Over the years, we’ve built Safe Browsing into other Google products to help protect people in more places:


As the web grows up, Safe Browsing technology will, too. We’re looking forward to protecting the web, and its users, for many birthdays to come.

Posted by Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Safe Browsing Team
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Once you’ve found the right device at the Google Store, you can still head to Google Play to find apps, games, music, movies, TV shows and more. If you recently bought a device on Google Play, don’t worry—your order info will automatically be transferred to the Google Store. See our Help Center for more information.

The Chromebook Pixel is available for purchase starting today in the U.S. on the new Google Store for $999 and $1299 for the LS version. Come check it out, and see what else is in store.

Posted by Andrew Bowers, Director of Consumer Hardware

*Battery life tested using Chromium standard PowerLoadTest at default brightness. The PowerLoadTest was created to emulate average user behavior and measure the resultant battery life. Charge time testing is measured by battery capacity increase with lid closed divided by average energy usage during PowerLoadtest. Battery life and charge time may vary depending on usage and other conditions.

 **Free shipping applies to the lowest cost shipping option. Free shipping promotion may be modified or discontinued at any time.
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3D imaging from the industrial robot, designed and built by Liz and her team
Source: “Seegrid Vision Guided Vehicle: Pallet Truck”

Liz often remembers being the only woman engineer on her team, but it wasn’t until she moved to a new city and spent more time working remotely that she began to feel isolated—and realized how important it was for her to have a community of like-minded people to connect with. She started volunteering with a few local organizations and started the local Girl Develop It chapter in 2014. In just seven months, her chapter has more than 500 members and Liz has found a network of people she can connect to.

There are many women like Liz who never find that sense of community and instead end up leaving tech permanently. Not only does that mean our industry is less diverse than it should be, but it also leads to less innovative products. That’s why it’s so important for Google to do our part in creating environments, programs and policies that help women in technology thrive. We’ve partnered with organizations like Girl Develop It, Women Who Code, Anita Borg Institute and the National Center for Women & Information Technology to create a more supportive environment for women in tech. And this International Women’s Day, we’re building on our efforts to empower women to become makers of technology. Here’s a look at what we’re up to:

Women Techmakers
Last year, Google started our Women Techmakers program to provide visibility, resources and a community for women in technology worldwide. This month we kicked off our second annual Women Techmakers Global Event Series, and we encourage you to attend an event to meet incredible women from around the world who are leading the technology industry. Create the future of wearables at a summit or from home with a brand new Android Wear Watch Face Codelab, and engage with the community using our hashtag #WTM15. For event highlights, photos and more check out Women Techmakers on Twitter and YouTube.

Share your wisdom with a #DearMe video letter
For many young girls, the path to finding themselves is filled with uncertainty. It’s hard to figure out what you want to do or who you want to be when you’re dealing with gossip, self-doubt and pressure from all sides. As part of our International Women’s Day celebration, we’re encouraging you to think back on the advice you wish you’d gotten when you were a young, and to share those words of wisdom with today’s teenage girls. Submit a video letter on YouTube tagged with #DearMe telling your younger self what you wish someone had told you. We’re looking forward to what you have to say.


A Doodle honoring women who transform the world
Finally, we couldn’t let International Women’s Day pass without a Doodle. So our homepage today celebrates the many ways women scientists, engineers, athletes, doctors, artists, explorers and more are changing the world.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Posted by Pavni Diwanji, VP of Engineering
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Email: more trouble than it’s worth?
There was a spike in searches for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after news broke that she used her private email rather than an official government account while she was in office. The potential Democratic presidential candidate’s actions are drawing criticism from the media, although Republicans have remained surprisingly silent on the issue. To quell fears that she’s got something to hide, Clinton tweeted: “I want the public to see my email”—guess there aren’t any skeletons in this inbox.

Trolls exit here
Karma, meet Internet trolls. This week several prominent figures struck back at their online harassers, starting with baseball player Curt Schilling, who called out on his personal blog cyber bullies who had made offensive comments about his daughter on Twitter. Two of the commenters have already lost their jobs due to Schilling’s response, leading some people to dub him an “Internet Vigilante.” The situation has certainly raised Shilling’s profile: Searches for the former Red Sox player have hit their highest in years.

American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson was next to take a swing at the haters. When British TV personality Katie Hopkins tweeted multiple derogatory remarks about Clarkson’s weight, the singer stood up for herself and against body shaming. Clarkson responded saying, “I’m awesome,” and that she doesn’t seek acceptance from others. The social media universe gave the singer a collective “You go girl,” and pushed Clarkson to the top of the search charts.
Tip of the week
Daylight Savings Time is upon us! If you have a tendency to forget to change your (analog) clocks, just tell Google, “Remind me to change my clock,” and handle the issue while it’s still fresh in your memory.


Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [how to bleach] and [texts from hillary]
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