Googler insights into product and technology news and our culture.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, M.D., Product Manager, Google Before joining Google, I was a full-time primary care doctor. My time working with patients every day, hearing their stories and trying to help make them better, is an experience I will cherish forever. And about once a week, I still practice as an urgent care doctor at a county hospital. Based on these experiences, I have witnessed the problems patients face. One of the biggest ones I see is the difficulty patients have getting answers to the most basic questions, such as 'What tests and treatments should I know about if I have type 2 diabetes? Is the care I am getting on par with what most experts recommend?'

Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube Back in March we kicked off our You Choose '08 program, a hub of political channels on YouTube designed to educate, empower, and connect voters and presidential candidates through the power of online video. Since then, millions of people have checked out the candidates' YouTube Channels, and thousands have communicated directly with those running for President via ratings, comments and video responses.

Posted by Peter Colijn, Software Engineer Don't you think that calendars should be more than lists of appointments and meetings? Well, we think an online calendar should be filled with what interests you most, which is why we just unveiled the Google Calendar gallery. Those of you with Google accounts and your friends (who might not have one) can create, share and save your favorite upcoming events directly in Google Calendar. Now you can find all sorts of interesting schedules to add to yours, like these:

Posted by John Hanke, Director for Maps, Earth and Local I am pleased to tell you that we've agreed to purchase Panoramio , a website based in Spain that links millions of photos with the exact geographical location where they were taken. ( Our FAQ has all the details.)

Posted by Chris Wetherell, Software Engineer With last week's launch of Google Gears , we're happy to let you know that Google Reader is the first Google web application made for online and offline viewing. If you're not familiar with Google Reader, it's a feed reader for getting updates from your favorite blogs and news sites.

Posted by Alex Mkindi, Tanzania Deputy Country Director, TechnoServe Google.org supports efforts to promote economic development in developing countries. From time to time we invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell us about their work.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar Last fall we talked about our work on efficient power supplies in the capable hands of Ben Jai, Ken Krieger and the rest of our power supply team. Since then, we've become involved in several projects focused on environmental stewardship. Today, for example, together with Intel, Dell, EDS, the EPA, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, the World Wildlife Fund, and more than 20 other companies, we announced the Climate Savers Computing Initiative . After working on this initiative over the last few months, we're delighted to join with so many organizations to form this new group. In particular this project should speak to every business with computers.

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel Over the years we’ve taken many steps to protect our users' data and privacy. For example, we have resisted overly-broad government subpoenas ; we've designed our services to give users a choice between personalized services and general services; and we've engineered our services to allow users to see and control how much data they wish to share with us. Recently, we took another important step to improve our privacy practices by announcing a new policy to anonymize our server logs after 18 to 24 months, becoming the first leading search company to publish a data retention policy. We also posted here to explain the factors that guided our decision to retain server log data for 18 to 24 months.

Posted by Aaron Whyte, Gmail Engineer Our shipment of delete buttons finally came in!

Posted by Michael Jones, Google Earth CTO Have you ever dreamed of Africa while reading National Geographic ? The exotic photographs and thoughtful articles take you there with a magical sense of place. Today we embraced that magic by releasing Google Earth data layers that index National Geographic stories, images, journals, and even a live webcam in Africa.