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Google’s Countdown Secret And New Year Doodle Revealed

On December 11th, we reported about an unexplained countdown that appears on the Google homepage when you click on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. We, of course, assumed it was counting down to the New Year. Other theories included the launch of the Nexus One, the public release of Google Wave, and even Google Chrome OS. Turns out we were right. It, in fact, is counting down to the New Year.

The countdown reaches 0 at midnight tonight. As soon as the countdown is over, the Google homepage is overlaid with a nice and colorful display of digital fireworks and Happy New Years all around. All you have to do to see this is adjust your computer clock to midnight, go to Google.com, and click on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Additionally, if you visit Google Australia now, you can see the doodle that Google might be using tonight.

You can check out a screenshot of the display after the break. More »

Google: Merge Your Duplicate Gmail Contacts With a Click of a Button

Google announced today on the Official Gmail Blog the release of a new feature that grants all of us, Gmail users the ability to merge all of our duplicate contacts with a simple click of a button. According to Google, all you have to do is “just click the ‘Find duplicates’ button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don’t want merged), and hit the ‘Merge’ button.” Yes, it’s that easy! More »

Check Out Google’s Countdown

Okay, we’re not entirely sure what Google is counting down to [ahem, New Year], but when you go to the Google homepage and click on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button without typing a query, a countdown time appears with more than 1.7 million seconds remaining as of 3 PM Pacific Time.

According to TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, when the 1.7 million minutes are converted into days, the results are about 20 days. The only thing we can think of happening in 20 days is New Year.

Let us know your theories of what Google is counting down to.

[ TechCrunch ]

YouTube Grants Partners Video Blocking Control

YouTube has granted its partners more blocking control over the videos they upload. As you can see in the image above, there are two new buttons in the partner’s interface that allow them to either block certain videos by country or to enable Auto Block, which automatically blocks copies of a video uploaded without the YouTube partner’s consent. More »