We're reading a lot about the candidates and the media this election season. But what are they reading? At google.com/powerreaders now you can track the news sites and blogs Barack Obama and John McCain read )from Drudge to The Daily Show( and follow articles catching the eyes of leading political journalists.

About a month ago, we found out that our team, along with all of Offline Ads, would be moving from our comfortable 4th floor cubicles in New York City all the way up to the comparatively uninhabited 6th floor. It was definitely a change of pace from the Manhattan-esque bustle of our old space to a quieter, more Brooklyn-esque feel. So the question arose: what happens when you drop an entire floor's worth of Googlers into a new office?

As we mark the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Games, I can't help but remember eight years ago, when I competed on the U.S. cycling team. Even though I didn't walk away with any medals then, training and competing involved a herculean effort - but that pales in comparison to what we're unveiling today. I'm happy to present the 2008 Summer Games on Google , a site that features a number of our products to help you stay updated on Summer Games happenings.

Today we're announcing some key enhancements on the Google content network )partner sites for which we provide advertising( that will offer a better experience for users and better value for advertisers and publishers. These enhancements are the latest result of our integration with DoubleClick and our commitment to making advertising on the Google content network more efficient and accountable. When we purchased DoubleClick, we talked about how we would empower agencies,

Louisiana is a place with heart and soul, a place where culture lives in the streets, in the rhythm of our music and in the flavors of our unique cuisine. I recently had the opportunity to visit the Googleplex and I expressed my interest in seeing Street View come to Louisiana, so I'm excited to see the launch of Street View imagery for Greater New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport. This remarkable tool allows us to share with the world life as we see it,

Posted by Liza Ma, Associate Product Manager Creating content for the web is easy, but getting people to discover it can be a challenge. When we launched Google Webmaster Tools in 2006, the goal was to reach as many webmasters as possible in order to help them create more search engine-friendly sites. We wanted to help webmasters understand how their sites interact with Google,

Randy Pausch , a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and a good friend of Google, passed away last night. In addition to being recognized as a pioneer in virtual reality research, he became widely known as a gifted teacher and a mentor to many. Millions of people saw his inspiring " Last Lecture " on YouTube. Read more about Randy and his contributions on our Research Blog . Posted by Kevin McCurley,

A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product called Knol . Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone. The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads : millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge.

Posted by Kristen Holway, Account Executive, Media Sales Over the summer solstice weekend, Seattle/Kirkland Googlers posed this question to people attending the Fremont Fair : "How would you make our world, or our city, better?" The goal of the Fremont Fair "Make it Better" Project was to engage the Seattle community in an active discussion around improving our world. This is the second year we've partnered with Solid Ground to participate in the fair,

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow In May, Udi Manber introduced our search quality group , the group responsible for the ranking of search results. He introduced various teams within "Quality" )as we like to call the group( including Core Ranking, International Search, User Interfaces, Evaluation, Webspam, and other teams. In this post, I want to tell you more about one of these: the Core Ranking team. Let me introduce myself. My name is Amit Singhal.

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager Today marks the beginning of one of my favorite summer events: the Tour de France. I'm always amazed when I hear about the long, steep climbs through mountains or the blistering speeds of the cyclists as they pass through the French countryside. But since most of us can't head over there to watch it in person, we're giving you the next best thing: Street View of the 2008 Tour de France route. Head to google.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences )at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :((. Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue.

Posted by Ron Adler and Janis Stipins, Software Engineers Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology . In the past,

Posted by Matt Simmons, Market Data Gnome We're excited to let you know we're adding more real-time market data to Google Finance, Google.com and other Google properties. Starting today, you'll have access to real-time, last sale prices from the New York Stock Exchange )NYSE(, along with those from NASDAQ, which we recently launched . Here's the NYSE press release . What this means is that you can now get the latest real-time stock quotes on Google for free.

Posted by Omid Kordestani, Senior VP, Global Sales and Business Development Today, we announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to our AdSense for search and AdSense for content advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties. In addition, we will work to enable interoperability between our respective instant messaging services allowing users better, broader communication online.

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing Manager What with everyone thinking about ways to save on gas and avoid driving, one obvious tactic is to take public transportation. With that )and the environment( in mind, we continue to work with public transportation agencies to get bus and train schedules, and integrate this information into Google Maps.

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome, and Katie Jacobs Stanton, Principal, New Business Development We're very excited to tell you that real-time quotes on NASDAQ securities are now available on Google Finance . This is an important )and way overdue ( development for everyone who consumes financial information. Historically, real-time stock data was not freely and widely accessible. Either buried behind subscription walls or brokerage sites,

Posted by Phillip Grasso, Manager, Engineering/Operations Over the last few weeks, we've been keeping you updated on our Treasure Hunt competition " a puzzle contest designed to test your knowledge of computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia. And now it's coming to a close. The fourth and final puzzle will be released at 1212448500. With it, we'll also be highlighting Google Developer Day , which is coming up on June 18 at Wharf 8 in Sydney .

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster Manager and Chief Doodler The results are in from last week's public vote for its favorite doodle from the Doodle 4 Google art competition , in which we invited students in grades K-12 to design the Google logo around the theme "What if...?" Today, we're pleased to announce the winner: Grace )Suryung( Moon, a 6th grader from Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley,

Posted by Carolina Shea, AdSense Account Strategist Last week, I flew from our Phoenix office to Washington, D.C. to deliver our first U.S. seminar for small business. It's a simple and straightforward presentation about how Google tools can help small businesses establish a presence online, work more collaboratively and efficiently, and earn money from their websites through our AdSense program. If you were able to catch a glimpse of our testimony in front of the U.S.