As part of our continued effort to be more transparent about how search works, we’re publishing video footage from our internal weekly search meeting: “Quality Launch Review.” We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch. This video is from the meeting that happened on December 1st, 2011, and includes the entire uncut discussion of a real algorithmic improvement to our spell correction system. The language can be technical, so we’ve included annotations to provide some context for the discussion (and have a little fun!).

Ad from the Good to Know campaign explaining how you can use “Me on the web” to control what the world sees about you online.

www.google.com/goodtoknow

Calling all young artists: there are only a few days left to submit artwork for the 2012 US Doodle 4 Google. In this video, our doodle team (the Googlers who design the artwork you see from time to time on Google’s homepage) shows how Google doodles are created as a special encouragement to young artists to get involved in this year’s contest. And don’t forget, all submissions are due March 23rd so there’s not a moment to wait!

Learn more: http://www.doodle4google.com

David Beckham stopped by Google’s Mountain View headquarters for a live Q&A with Googlers, where he also took questions from fans across the world on January 19th, 2012. Watch the full interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VveDqucdfnc

Create presentations together. Google Docs lets you create, share and collaborate on presentations with others. Go to http://docs.google.com to give it a try.

The best man gets help from the wedding party on the Best Best Man speech. Collaborate anywhere with the updated Google Docs app for Android.

Learn more search tips & tricks at http://www.google.com/insidesearch

Abstract: How well DO people search on Google? Although popular opinion is that “everyone is above average,” that obviously can’t be true. The truth is that self-perceptions of search expertise are often wildly over-estimated and that people, on average, actually use only a fraction of the potential of Google. They both don’t know much of what’s possible, and don’t understand where internet search capabilities are headed. Since the rate of change and improvements isn’t slowly down, in this talk I’ll examine where we are, and where we’re headed, and conclude with some heuristics for teaching research skills in the years ahead.

Bio: Daniel Russell is the Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness in Mountain View. He earned his PhD in computer science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence until he realized that magnifying and understanding human intelligence was his real passion. Twenty years ago he foreswore AI in favor of HI, and enjoys teaching, learning, running and music, preferably all in one day. He has worked at Xerox PARC before it was PARC.com, was in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple where he wrote the first 100 web pages for www.Apple.com using SimpleText. He has also worked at IBM and briefly at a startup that developed tablet computers before the iPad.

Running time: 36 mins

Presented at: Colorado State University Library Conference, Boulder, CO, Jan 12, 2012

With Google+ Instant Upload, every picture you take on your phone is instantly backed up to a private Google+ album. It’s a simple way to make sure you never lose another memory. Download the Google+ app on your phone or learn more at http://www.google.com/mobile/+/