Google Product Helping Blog

�How many days until Halloween?� �What should I be for Halloween?� In the weeks leading up to All Hallows� Eve you turn to Google Search to ask these two crucial questions. So with just days left to perfect a costume for yourself, your kid, your pooch or your partner, here�s a look at some of the top Halloween costume trends across the United States. For more, see  Frightgeist , our Google Trends Halloween hub. Hair-raising If your costume involves a certain familiar �do, prepare to have company. Get-ups based on the bombastic GOP candidate for President are spiking, with the top-related search being �Donald Trump wig.� And don�t go looking for blue or purple hair-dye at the last minute on Saturday: chances are it will already have been bought up by kids dressing up as Disney�s �Descendants� characters Mal and Evie. And if you�re aiming for a unique costume, you might want to avoid buns on the side of your head too. �Star Wars� is the second most searched costume nationwide, and wi...

Starting next year, the top three mobile network operators in Indonesia will begin testing Project Loon balloon-powered Internet . Over the next few years, we�re hoping that Loon will help put high-speed LTE Internet connections within reach of more than 100 million Indonesians, giving them access to the limitless educational, cultural, and economic opportunities of the Internet. From left to right: Ririek Adriansyah, CEO of Telkomsel; Dian Siswarini, CEO of XL Axiata; Alexander Rusli, Indosat CEO; Mike Cassidy, VP, Loon; Sergey Brin, President, Alphabet Inc  In Indonesia today, only about 1 out of every 3 people are connected to the web, and most of their connections are painfully slow. Many people live in areas without existing Internet infrastructure; on an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, with mountains and jungles, it�s difficult to run fiber optic cable or install mobile phone towers. That�s where Loon comes in. Loon balloons act like floating cell phone towers in the sky....

Whether you�re chatting with friends, streaming music or video calling family, Wi-Fi matters. You should have more router options that don�t involve spotty connections, messy cords and complicated settings. That�s why we introduced the first OnHub router this summer, designed to be fast, secure and easy to use�not to mention attractive enough to put out in the open, where Wi-Fi works best. Now, with our partner ASUS, we�re introducing the second member of our growing OnHub family. OnHub routers are meant to be displayed proudly, and to get rid of the headaches you usually associate with home Wi-Fi. That makes ASUS a great partner, since they design intuitive products that focus on the ways real people use them. Like our first router, the ASUS OnHub comes with faster Wi-Fi, easy set-up, and simple management with the Google On app. With the ASUS OnHub, we�re also introducing Wave Control, which lets you boost the Wi-Fi speed for a particular device by simply waving your hand over ...

Millions of people around the world want to do what they can to help refugees and migrants caught up in the crisis in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. We wanted to give you an update on where things stand as we continue to think about what Google�and all of us�can do to help. A month ago we invited everyone to make a donation to support the work of organizations providing essential assistance to refugees and migrants. We were amazed that in just over 48 hours people around the world donated �5M ($5.5. million) to support the work of Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. As promised, we then matched your donations with �5M in Google.org grants to support high-impact projects, like offering wireless connectivity solutions in refugee camps, providing emergency cash transfers to refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, and enabling access to education. Googlers around the world also gave, donating more th...

There�s nothing like reminiscing over family albums, capturing that perfect sunset pic, or finding the throwbackiest of throwbacks for #TBT. When we launched Google Photos in May, we wanted to make all these experiences even better�with unlimited high quality storage so you never need to worry about where to store your snapshots, automatic organization and great search so you can quickly find the photo you�re looking for, and easy sharing so you can send any photo to anyone with just a link. Five months later, we�ve crossed more than 100 million monthly active users�and to celebrate, we�ve collected a few factoids we�ve discovered about people and the things we photograph, along with a few tips. 1. One hundred million of you are using Google Photos. Thanks to everyone who�s given Google Photos a whirl! 2. You�re all foodies� or at least you want people to think you are. Note: Search for �pizza� on an empty stomach at your own risk. 3. Let the good times roll. Try searching �Halloween� ...

We�re always amazed by the power of technology to connect people. Not long ago we heard a story involving the Google Translate app and a boy named Alberto who had recently moved from Spain to a small town in Northern Ireland, with little knowledge of English. When Alberto joined Portadown�s youth soccer club, his coaches Gary and Glen turned to Google Translate to communicate with Alberto and his mother, on and off the field. As they progressed from protecci�n de la pelota to retroceso de bicicleta , Alberto grew to feel a part of the team. We loved this story (and wanted to share it with you) because what Gary and Glen did was so much bigger than translating sentences from one language into another. They didn�t just find a way to coach Alberto in football�they found a way to invite someone who was on the outside into their community. �Vamos, Alberto! Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate We loved this story because what Gary and Glen did was so much bigger than t...

Today we�re kicking off the 2015 Doodle 4 Google art competition, where creative and curious students across the U.S. vie to take over the Google homepage for a day with their artwork. This year�s theme, �What makes me�me,� invites students K-12 to express themselves in the form of a doodle highlighting what makes them unique. But wait don�t get out those pencils just yet. This year, there�s a twist. Doodle 4 Google is now in its eighth year (if Doodle 4 Google were a kid, it�d be a third grader)�so we decided to mix things up a bit to let kids� imaginations really run wild. For the first time, there are no constraints on medium: students can cook, build, cut, spin, paint, or mold their doodle�basically use any material they like as long as they incorporate the letters G-O-O-G-L-E. The Doodle team itself has used a variety of unexpected materials over the years; for example, one Earth Day , we grew a bed of flowers to spell out the doodle. So we figured: let�s open the doors for all ...

Smartphones and tablets have revolutionized the way we access information, and today people consume a tremendous amount of news on their phones. Publishers around the world use the mobile web to reach these readers, but the experience can often leave a lot to be desired. Every time a webpage takes too long to load, they lose a reader�and the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions. That's because advertisers on these websites have a hard time getting consumers to pay attention to their ads when the pages load so slowly that people abandon them entirely. Today, after discussions with publishers and technology companies around the world, we�re announcing a new open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages , which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. We want webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics to work alongside smart ads, and to load instantaneously. We also want the same code to work across multi...

For the last eight years, teams from around the world have been racing to win a global competition to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon successfully. It�s called the Google Lunar XPRIZE, and it�s been going on in labs and universities from Brazil to Japan to Carnegie Mellon. With 16 remaining teams of scientists, explorers and adventurers hard at work designing and fundraising, the race is on to be the first privately-funded moon landing (and to take home a share of the $30 million prize purse that comes with it). This week, they all got a little bit closer. Team SpaceIL, a team of engineers based in Israel, has just managed to secure a �ticket to the moon��in the form of an official, verified launch contract�for its spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft will hitch a ride in a specially designed capsule on the Falcon 9; once separated from the launcher and released from the capsule, it will use navigation sensors to guide it to the lunar surface. Here�s a first ...