Google Cloud SQL now Generally Available with an SLA 500GB databases and encryption

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed MySQL service hosted on Google Cloud Platform, providing a database backbone for applications running on Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine. Today, we are announcing Cloud SQL is generally available (GA), now with: encryption of customer data, a 99.95% uptime SLA, and support for databases up to 500GB in size.



Secure Encrypted Data

Cloud SQL data is now automatically encrypted. This adds to the existing security and reliability features, including:

• Customer data, including in database tables and temporary files, is automatically stored encrypted (with encryption of backups coming soon).


• All Cloud SQL traffic on Google’s internal networks is encrypted.


• External connections can be encrypted using SSL.


• All hosts and Google App Engine applications connecting to your instance must be explicitly authorized.


• MySQL user grants can be used to control access at the database, table, or even column level.


• Data is replicated multiple times in multiple locations.


• Scheduled backups are automatically taken by default.

Larger databases

All Cloud SQL instances can now store up to 500GB, from our smallest D0 instance costing just $0.025 per hour up to D32 instances with 16GB of RAM. Your data is replicated multiple times in multiple zones and automatically backed up, all included in the price of the service. And you only pay for the storage that you actually use, so you don’t need to reserve this storage in advance.



SLA for availability

Replicated storage means we can guarantee 99.95% availability of the service. And because even a reduced service is not acceptable for many applications, we have set a high bar for availability: for example, we regard a single minute of just 20% connection failure as a downtime. See the SLA for more details.



Developer traction

Cloud SQL has seen some great developer traction, with a range of businesses relying on it for core applications:

• Costco uses Google Compute Engine and Cloud SQL to run public e-commerce sites. As Don Burdick, Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce at Costco, says, “Costco is the worlds leading membership club warehouse with annual sales exceeding $100B. As part of our philosophy to keep costs down and pass savings on to our members, in June 2013 we implemented our ecommerce site for Mexico on Google Cloud Platform. The site has been operational since October 2013 and the Google Cloud Platform performance has exceeded our expectations. As a result of this projects success, were currently migrating the website of one of our other countries to Google Cloud Platform.”


• LiveHive is a social selling application used by 25,000+ sales professionals. Fritz Mueller, Vice President of Products says, "We found Googles Cloud SQL service to be an ideal combination of performance and convenience. Performance is key to us because we provide our customers with real-time data about their sales execution. With Googles Cloud SQL, we focus on building the functionality our customers want without worrying about reliability, scalability and upgrades."


• Ocado manages logistics and e-commerce for some of the largest supermarkets in the UK. General Manager James Donkin says, “Were excited about the flexibility Cloud SQL brings to support quick development cycles that foster innovation, while scaling easily when required.”


• Mark Kornfilt, co-founder of Live video streaming platform Livestream, said “Thanks to Google App Engine and Cloud SQL, we were able to go from a new product concept to its launch in less than two months. This allows us to focus on building the product instead of worrying about operations, and provides all the tools needed to build a robust, reliable and scalable web app out of the box.”

Try it now

Learn more about Google Cloud SQL and try it now here.



-Posted by Joe Faith, Product Manager

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Dashing through the snow with NORAD and Google

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog and Lat Long Blog)

Every Christmas Eve, children all over the world ask themselves—and their parents—questions about Santa’s magical journey. How does Santa visit so many children in one night? Will he eat the cookies I left out? How does he fit all those presents into his sleigh? These childhood mysteries are part of what makes the Santa tradition so special.

There’s one timeless question that we’re proud to say we can help answer: Where in the world is Santa at this very moment? Thanks in part to recent advances in warp-speed GPS technology and some very clever elves (elveneering?) NORAD Tracks Santa is once again prepped and ready to go.

Starting tomorrow, December 24 at 2:00am EST, visit www.noradsanta.org to follow Santa as he journeys around the world delivering presents to children in more than 200 countries and territories. There are a few different ways to find the jolly old man in his unmistakable red suit over the course of the day, so feel free to track him using any of the following methods:

• See Santa on a Google Map: On your home computer or laptop, visit www.noradsanta.org and choose your preferred language. You’ll see a large Google Map on the page displaying Santa’s current location and his next stop. Click the video icons to watch “Santa Cam” videos, and click the gift icons to learn more about each city.
  
  
• Watch Santa fly with the Google Earth Plug-in: From www.noradsanta.org, click on the link Track Santa in Google Earth. Youll see Santa steering his sleigh right on the webpage. If you dont have the Google Earth plug-in, you can get ready by downloading it ahead of time.
  
  
• Follow Santa on your phone: Track Santa from your mobile phone by opening Google Maps for mobile and searching for [santa]. Or, visit m.noradsanta.org on your phone’s browser.
  
  
• Subscribe to his YouTube channel: Santa’s home on YouTube is at http://www.youtube.com/noradtrackssanta. That’s where you can find videos from his journey throughout the night.
  
  
• Get real-time information about Santa’s location: Use Google’s Realtime Search to get updates from social networks, news and micro-blogs like Twitter at @noradsanta, and keep up with news about his journey on this Facebook page.

For any techie questions you might have, we’ve also put together some helpful tips and tricks about all the cool ways you can experience Santa’s journey. Now that you know how to follow Saint Nick on Christmas Eve, it’s our tradition to tell the story of how this all started...

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) first began to track Santa in 1955 when a misprinted advertisement in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue mistakenly led callers expecting a Santa-hotline to the NORAD commander-in-chiefs telephone. Embracing the spirit of the season, NORAD used its satellite and radar capabilities to offer callers sleigh-location updates, and has tracked Santas whereabouts on Christmas Eve ever since. Then in 2004, Google started tracking Santa on Google Earth as a 20% project, which in 2007 grew into a partnership with NORAD, adding the mapping technology of Google Maps and Google Earth to the NORAD experience. Over the years, other Google teams have also joined in the holiday fun (YouTube, Google Voice’s www.SendACallFromSanta.com and Google SketchUp).

As we approach this year’s Christmas Eve adventure, Santa was able to take a break from the preparations to visit the New York Stock Exchange this past Monday. His helpful elves kept everything at the North Pole on schedule while folks from Google and NORAD attended the Closing Bell ceremony, and stood alongside Santa from Macy’s going over last minute details about tomorrow’s big ride.

Santa with NORAD, Google and members of the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation (that’s me, the tall guy in the back row clapping)

So don’t forget to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 2:00am EST when Santa embarks on his flight. From all of us here at Google, happy holidays and here’s to a very happy New Year!


Posted by Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf

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Get bus and train directions on the go with Google Maps for mobile

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

Ever since Google Maps added public transportation directions for San Francisco, its been a lot easier for me to figure out which buses and trains will get me where Im going around town, so that todays gas prices take less of a toll on my wallet. Even so, Ive often found myself wishing that I had an easy way to get transit directions while Im out and about.

Enter the new version of Google Maps for mobile. This version (2.2) allows you to get transit directions in all the same places as the web version of Google Maps, including Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Vancouver, and over 40 other cities in North America.

This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.

To see how the transit feature of Google Maps for mobile works, take a look at this quick video walkthrough with my co-worker Ryan:


This version of Google Maps for mobile also includes a bunch of other goodies, like faster searching on BlackBerry devices and star ratings for businesses. Its currently available for BlackBerry devices and many other Java-based phones. To download it to your phone visit http://www.google.com/gmm from your phones web browser or on the desktop.

Were working to bring public transit directions to Google Maps on other devices, so stay tuned!

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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Now Available on Google Compute Engine

Todays guest post comes from Michael Miller, Vice President of Global Alliances and Marketing at SUSE. In this post, Michael describes SUSEs integration with Google Compute Engine.



We’re happy to bring SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to Google Compute Engine for all machine instance types. We’re committed to delivering products that offer the performance, reliability, security and scalability that development teams and IT operations groups require when moving to the cloud.



One of our key focus areas from the beginning that has only escalated in importance is the delivery of the most scalable operating system possible. Using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on Google Compute Engine gives users access to an operating system that is certified with 4,096 logical CPUs and 64 TiB of RAM and contains the OFED Stack for low-latency, inter-machine communication. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also ships with the XFS file system and Btrfs, a more resilient file system with improved scalability and data integrity.



With more than 10,000 applications from over 1,500 ISVs certified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we believe that running SUSE on Google Compute Engine will offer customers a highly resilient infrastructure for building and running their workloads in a public cloud environment. We also include a comprehensive software developer kit (SDK) with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The SDK includes versioning tools (git, subversion), Perl, Python, PHP and Ruby on Rails and helps make SUSE Linux Enterprise Server an ideal platform for Google Compute Engine users to develop and test new applications. And to simplify the deployment, configuration and administration of workloads on Google Compute Engine, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also includes an integrated suite of management tools (YaST, AutoYaST, Zypp and a small footprint CIM broker).



Whether developing new applications or bringing existing workloads, this is just some of the innovation that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will offer Google Compute Engine users.



-Contributed by Michael Miller, Vice President of Global Alliances and Marketing, SUSE

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Google Maps For iPhone 5 and iOS6

Finally, the long wait to enjoy excellent and accurate maps on iPhone 5 and iOS 6 is now over.
The big G has finally released their popular Google maps for iPhone 5 and iOS 6 devices.
This can be downloaded from the App Store and its of course free.
Since the removal of Google maps from iOS 6 by Apple and replaced with its own offering, there had been criticism from every side due to inaccurate destination that it provides.
Well, finally, those on iOS 6 and iPhone 5 can now enjoy accurate and well established mapping app of Google Maps.
Its features are as awesome as you would expect from the big G mapping app.
It has voice guided navigation
Turn by turn navigation
Local Search
Street view
Transit view and more

The truth is, no matter how much Apple try to polish their Map app, it wont be as robust and reliable as the Google maps.

So, head over to the App Store and get yourself the Google maps that will take you to your destinations safely.
Its only available for iPhone at the moment and will be available for iPad users soon.
Download here

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Introducing Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

Last week, we introduced expanded mobile reporting features in Google Analytics. To help developers, this launch includes features that make it easy to see how people are using specific parts of their iPhone and Android applications. The same Google Analytics reports that provide insights into website traffic and engagement are now available for mobile apps.

As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track: pageviews and events. Since mobile apps dont contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger pageview requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app.
Developers can also track visitor actions that dont correspond directly to pageviews using Event Tracking. These user actions can include views of embedded videos, button clicks, downloads and more. App developers can then use this data to understand which features are most popular and inform decisions about which features should be promoted or prioritized for further development.
Redfin, an online brokerage for buying and selling homes, recently tested Google Analytics on their mobile application. Watch this video to learn more about their experience:



To get started using Google Analytics to understand and optimize how people use your iPhone or Android mobile app, check out the SDK and technical documentation.

Posted by Meredith Papp, Google mobile ads team

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