You can already do plenty of calculations and conversions right in Google’s search box, and it looks like the company’s now made it even smarter still. Searching for the title of an upcoming movie or video game plus “release date” will now instantly give you Google’s best guess for when the title will actually be released, which is apparently based on how often it’s been mentioned on certain websites. So far, we’ve only been able to get it to work with movies and games, although it seems pretty likely that it will soon expand to other areas as well — maybe even gadgets? Try it out yourself and let us know if you find anything.
ComScore has just released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer.
According to the audience measurement giant, the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5 billion viewing sessions during the course of last month.
Google Sites (read: YouTube) again ranked as the top online video content property in February, with an impressive 141.1 million unique viewers.
Microsoft notably surged from the seventh to the second place in the ranking with 48.8 million viewers. It was followed by Yahoo and Facebook, who both logged 46.7 million viewers. VEVO ranked fifth with a decent 45.9 million viewers.
Hulu only came in ninth with 27.3 million viewers in February, but according to comScore did generate the highest number of video ad impressions (more than 1.1 billion).
Looking at the top online video content properties last month, Google attracted as many viewers as the three challengers that make up the rest of the top 4 of the ranking, combined.
According to comScore, Google Sites also boasted the highest number of viewing sessions with 1.8 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 262 minutes (or 4.4 hours).
Great news for Chicago entrepreneurship. Google exec Kevin Willer has been named CEO of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (CEC). An affiliate of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the CEC identifies the region’s most promising entrepreneurs and helps them build high-growth, sustainable businesses in the region.
Willer co-founded Google’s Chicago office in late 2000 and has helped grow the Google Chicago office to more than 400 professionals. Willer developed Google partnerships with advertisers and agencies, including Dell, United Airlines, FTD, State Farm, Omnicom, and Publicis. Willer also spearheaded advertising relationships with AT&T, Sprint, Dell and Motorola.
As a resident of Chicago, it’s great to see such a seasoned exec lead entrepreneurship efforts in the Windy City. As technology companies like Groupon, 37 Signals, GrubHub, Appolicious and others see success, Chicago is just another city proving that all innovation and entrepreneurship doesn’t take place exclusively in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Google has had a one-stop shop for nonprofits to learn more about and leverage Google services for some time, but today, the search giant is launching a new version that enables these organizations to better use Google’s technologies.
Google offers select nonprofits the ability use Google Apps for free, also offers financial credits on Google AdWords, and more. Instead of having to apply to use all of these services separately, Google now allows users to apply via a one-stop shop application process. If approved, nonprofits can access Google’s suite of product offerings designed for nonprofits. This includes up to $10,000 a month in advertising on Google AdWords, free or discounted Google Apps and premium features for YouTube and Google Maps.
The company is also rolling out Google for Nonprofits Marketplace, which connects nonprofits with professional service providers who have agreed to offer their services for a free or discounted rate. Google says these these providers are already partners from Google’s other marketplaces, such as AdWords Authorized Resellers, Google Apps Marketplace and the Google Earth Outreach Developer Marketplace.
It looks like nonprofits are already benefiting from using Google’s products. Direct Relief International has raised more than $1 million using Google AdWords, Samasource saved tens of thousands of dollars using Google Apps and the Natural Resource Defense Council earned 100,000 views from one video on their YouTube channel with no paid advertising.
Google-owned mobile ad network AdMob is announcing a number of new products and features today for developers and advertisers. This includes the launch of the beta SDK for Windows Phone 7, which will allows these platform developers to advertise via AdMob.
Google director of engineering Mark Schaaf (who is a former AdMob Engineering Director and the network’s third employee) says that the addition of Windows Phone 7 SDK aligns with Google’s openness strategy, which in AdMob’s case, allows developers and advertisers to users across multiple mobile platforms. He says that the AdMob network currently includes more than 50,000 mobile applications across iOS, Android, and webOS platforms.
Similar to the iOS and Android experience, developers using Windows Phone 7 SDK can use the format to integrate AdMob advertising into apps, control where ads appear, and what types of ads are served. The ad unit supports a variety of post click actions including opening a webpage and linking directly to the App Marketplace. And the Windows Phone 7 beta SDK currently supports text and banner ads and can be downloaded by creating a new site on AdMob.
AdMob has also updated iOS and Android SDKs with HTML5 support for its ad units, allowing advertisers to create more rich media advertisements that can be viewed across platforms. Previously, the formats were written in Google/AdMob’s own markup language, but with the addition of HTML5, Schaaf says that the format gives advertisers and developers more openness across many platforms. He says that HTML5 allows advertisers to do more with less coding and also allows for more seamless transitions and formats on devices. Additionally, AdMob is also supporting full screen interstitial formats for tablets on iOS and Android.
The move to HTML5 isn’t surprising for AdMob, considering that Google is a huge proponent of HTML5.
From the ad requests standpoint, AdMob appears to be growing under the Google umbrella. We heard earlier this year that AdMob is currently receiving 2 billion ad requests per day, a data point which has quadrupled over the past year. But there have been rumors that the transition isn’t going so great over at the Googleplex, which is of course contradictory to Google’s growth stats.
Regardless, mobile advertising is a multi-billion industry, and there’s no doubt that Google will continue to innovate so that it can take a piece of this enormously large pie.
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Great news for Chicago entrepreneurship. Google exec Kevin Willer has been 
Google has had a 
