Google Invests Again in Company of Co-Founder’s Wife

Google is still tightly intertwined with 23andme, a company that helps consumers understand and decipher their genomes. 23andme has raised another $2.6 million from Google out of a total $24.26 million it is trying to raise in a Series B round of funding, according to regulatory filings. This brings the total amount raised from this round to $13.6 million, after May’s $11 million funding round. At the time, Mohr Davidow Ventures divested its stake in 23andme after investing in a direct competitor Navigenics.

The juiciest disclosure in the filing is that Brin loaned the startup an additional $10 million which is being converted into Series B preferred shares. Earlier in 2007, he had loaned the company $2.6 million which was repaid from the proceeds of Google’s subsequent $3.9 million stake in 23andMe in May, 2007. The debt was repaid after the Google investment. It appears that Brin once again had to dig into his own pocket to help keep the company afloat.

The filing also says one of the investors in the Series B round in May was New Enterprise Associates, which also invested in 23andme’s Series A round. And it mentions that Google has entered into a lease agreement with 23andme, possibly for office space, but it is unclear what exactly is being leased.

23andme, which was co-founded by Sergey Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki, raised $9 million in a Series A round of funding from Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures in 2007. The company maps consumers’ DNA and helps them find information about their ancestry and their risks of getting certain diseases (Michael tried it last year).

Google Books Adds New Features And Tools

Google has launched a bunch of new features to Google Books in an effort to promote interactivity between readers and the online books.

1. Embeddable previews of books: This new feature allows you to embed a preview of a full view or partner book in your websites or blogs, just like you would with a YouTube video. You can also copy and paste a url link in an email to share the book with your friends.

2. Ramped up in-book search: For public domain and partner books, Google has made the ability to search for a term within a book a little bit more user friendly. When you search for a term on a book, you can now see an image from the part of the page on which it appears. You can also click on those images to navigate directly to the pages inside the book. And you can filter search results by relevance in addition to page order in the book or magazine.

3. Thumbnail view options: You now have the option to click on the thumbnail view button to see an overview of all the pages in a public domain book or in a magazine.

4. Contents drop-down menu: Via a contents drop-down menu, Google Books will now allow you to jump to chapters within the book–or articles within a magazine (the same technology supports the mobile version of Google Books).

5. Plain Text Mode: Google’s made it easier to see the plain text versions of Google Books. The tool bar now includes a ‘Plain text’ button to see the HTML version of the text, which Google says is especially useful for visually impaired users, who can use this format for text-to-speech and other types of software.

6. Page Turn Button and Animation: In addition to scrolling through the book, you can now also click the page turn button at the bottom of the screen. Google also has implemented an an animated line to move with the page turn to make it easier to keep track of your location in the text.

7. Overview Page Overhaul: Google has added an assortment of data about the book on its overview page, including reviews, ratings, summaries, related books, key words and phrases, references from the web, places mentioned in the book, and publisher information.

Last October, Google signed a $125 million settlement with the Author’s Guild to pay authors for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web through its Google Book Search project. More than 7 million books have been scanned by Google so far, a large portion of them out of print. The Settlement, though the site is up and running, is still up in the air, facing an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. And the settlement has draw its fair share of critics, including Jeff Bezos.

Google Flipper Is About To Jump Out Of The Water

Google is about to launch a new Google Labs project it calls Flipper, we’ve learned. No, it’s not a dolphin. As you can see in the screenshot, it looks like the project is a more visual way to read Google News, or to “flip through it,” as it were.

While we have yet to use it, what looks nice about it is that you can not only browse by sections, but also by sources, keywords, and most importantly by elements such as “most popular” and “recommended.” The visual representation probably won’t revolutionize Google News’ often sub-par performance, but the better filters could.

The URL currently takes you to a Google log-in page, but when you sign-in you’re greeted with:

Please visit this page from any computer on the corporate network to automatically enable access for your account.

Which means this remains internal to Google right now. But look for it soon. Click on the image below for a slightly larger version.

Facebook Makes It Easier

Facebook has had a big week. The social network finally caught up to MySpace in the U.S., according to ComScore. News leaked of its upcoming Everyone button. And Facebook made some significant improvements to its search capabilities. Now the social network is improving its inbox’s interface, which previously was a little clunky and difficult to organize.

The new design gives you filter options at the top of your inbox to help you identify unread messages as well as to report any spam, or unwanted messages you receive.

Facebook has also ramped up its search feature within the inbox, which was lacking in its earlier version. To find specific messages, you can type a keyword or a friend’s name in the search box in the upper-left corner of the screen, and then the results come back only for messages from that person. Yes, this is pretty basic stuff, but it should make it easier to search your Facebook inbox.

Facebook is keeping some of the same functionality as before. You can still view Updates from the Facebook Pages you are connected with. You can also manage subscriptions to your fan pages by clicking the “Edit Subscriptions” link beneath “Inbox of Updates.” Facebook says it plans to send messages from Groups and Events to Updates as well.

Friendfeed has also updated its email capabilities today, making a few useful improvements its email alerts for new subscribers.

I.B.M. to Invest $100 Million in Cellphone Research

I.B.M., long synonymous with the personal computer, hopes to become equally influential in mobile computing.

The company plans to announce Wednesday a $100 million investment pool to develop new services for mobile phones. The company provided few specifics about its research goals but said it broadly hopes to improve mobile payment methods, security, privacy and user interfaces and, chiefly, to enhance the ability of corporations to use mobile devices to interact with customers and employees.

In developing such a fund, IBM is tagging behind venture capitalists, mobile phone manufacturers and carriers that have created big pools of research and investment money for the mobile space. The growth of more advanced phones that give consumers easier access to the Internet has spurred their interest, as has corporations’ hopes of turning mobile gadgets into platforms for content delivery and commerce.

In a press release, IBM picked up on the trend that the personal computer was no longer the center of the action.

“Mobile devices are gradually becoming ubiquitous and helping us transcend many boundaries — geographical, economic, and social, among others,” says Dr. Guruduth Banavar, global leader of the mobile communications focus for I.B.M. Research and director of I.B.M. Research–India

I.B.M. said it hoped its research would serve “the millions of people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing the Internet and instead use their mobile devices for managing large forces of enterprise field workers, conducting financial transactions, entertainment, shopping and more.”

Good.ly – the URL shortener for Twitter

You may have heard of a new URL-shortening service on the block called Good.ly. It’s a product spun out Skimlinks, an affiliate links aggregator we’ve covered extensively before. The connection is that Good.ly is linked to affiliate schemes which then generate cash for charities.

If you use Good.ly to make a product recommendation on Twitter (it’s also at @good_ly) and people click on and then buy what you suggested, Good.ly gives 55% of any earned referral fees to one of its nominated charities. So far the Dogs Trust, Crisis and ChildVoice International are signed up, but about 100 others have applied. The other 45% is used to run the service and continue marketing it.

Yesterday Good.ly donated 100% of all profits to charity as part of the #CharityTuesday trend on Twitter, so it’s obviously possible. Perhaps they should consider reducing their percentage as the service gets traction?

Good.ly shortened links are run through Skimlinks, and turned into an affiliate link where possible. Skilmlinks has 8,000 retailers so there’s a fair chance they’ll have a suitable product.

They’re also trying to get onto Seesmic Desktop, and you can vote for them here.

Yahoo Gallery Closed

One thing Yahoo has been very good at over the past year is closing down services. Today brings news of another one shutting down: Yahoo Gallery. Come July 14, it will be no more.

Yahoo Gallery was a project that never left beta testing. It was intended to showcase cool applications that were built using Yahoo’s various services and APIs. And while it was a decent idea as a way to show off cool things like Flickr apps, it never really took off. Here’s Yahoo’s explanation message about the shuttering:

Yahoo! Gallery will be shutting down on July 14, 2009.

After careful consideration, we have decided to close the Yahoo! Gallery beta service. Although the Gallery gained a core of loyal users who enjoyed the service, Yahoo! has been reprioritizing some products to help us deliver the best possible experiences to consumers and developers. The decision to close the gallery is part of this larger strategy and will allow us to focus on helping our customers develop engaging applications using Yahoo! technologies.

If you have submitted any applications, you can go to the My Applications page, then download any images or text descriptions you wish to save.

The sentence, “The decision to close the gallery is part of this larger strategy and will allow us to focus on helping our customers develop engaging applications using Yahoo! technologies” doesn’t seem to make much sense. Isn’t that exactly what Gallery was supposed to highlight? But whatever — Deadpool, it is.

Gallery’s closing follows the much bigger decision to shutter Geocities earlier this year. And Yahoo officially shuttered Yahoo 360 last month, and Jumpcut shut down two days ago.