The latest “Sesame Street” Muppets to be featured on Google.com this week are the famous duo, Bert and Ernie.

Ernie and Bert

Search engine Google is honoring “Sesame Street’s” 40^th anniversary with a series of special doodles on its logo.  Big Bird was featured on Wednesday, and Cookie Monster was featured on Thursday.

“Sesame Street” will celebrate its big anniversary on November 10, 2009.  To see highlights of the upcoming 40^th season, click here.

The “Sesame Street” Muppets have also made several TV appearances this week, including “Today” on NBC Friday morning.

With a few more days to go before the anniversary celebration, Google will likely honor a few more “Sesame Street” Muppets on its page. Which Muppets would you like to see? Share your comments below.

Temporary Error 502 is doing the rounds of Gmail account holders.

This is how many gmail users will be greeted when logging into to check their emails:

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to log in while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try logging in to your account again in a few minutes.

How comforting is it to know this, right? Did Jack mix up the wires again?

Google mail should hopefully get it working again but Temporary Error 502 and the fast rising heart beat tells you how important Internet, emails etc have become in our daily lives.

You don’t have to sacrifice bulls here to keep Google happy but it is extremely essential for you as a webmaster to ensure you share a healthy relationship with Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista etc.

However Google is a cut above the rest because almost 70 to 80 percent of the world uses Google to extract information from the web. [The percentage is not backed by any source but just to give you an idea of the importance of Google].

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Google submitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 H-1B applications this April for 2009.

Last year, 248 of its visa applications were accepted by the Labor Department. But thats not all. Around 70, which is more than 25%, were rejected, according to Wolfe, who is Google’s global mobility manager.

The company has no definite plans on how many applications it plans to file each year. Depending on the business, if it grows or is expected to grow in a certain field, they add more bodies in the department.

When the business is good (or exceptionally good in the case of Google!) they seek to attract, hire, and retain the world’s top talent, both U.S.-born and non-U.S.-born. Google is committed to hiring the best and brightest employees, regardless of country of origin.

Wolfe, the mobility manager also offered a couple of examples of the numerous “incredibly talented” employees it has hired and trained in the U.S. under the H-1B visa program.

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Guess how much do the founders Sergey and Larry, and CEO of Google Eric Schmidt pay themselves?

Finally the search engine giant has filed its 2008 proxy statement which shows what insane amounts these guys pay themselves as Salary at Google:

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Google has done it again. The media giant has just launched its online education portal focusing on computer science and related technologies all for no charge.

Want to learn how to program or refresh your language skills? Database development fascinates you? How about the latest web 2.0 app tools like AJAX and CSS etc?

Enhance your skills as a developer or programmer or just learn the lingo. The website has tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas including Distributed Systems, Web Security, and a bunch of other great classes including common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and software configuration management.

Want to see what Stanford is teaching its CS majors? You can search for the computer science courses of different colleges that have been released online. Apparently a cluster search of specific colleges whose computer science websites have been added to be searched from.

Head over to the website to find out more.

(The house, in Menlo Park, California, where Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented the garage nine years ago to set up Google. Google purchased the 1,900 sq ft house from Susan Wojcicki).

How the Google News came about has an interesting story behind it.

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I recently used Google’s telephone help service and the experience was truly amazing. I haven’t heard people in my circle of friends either mentioning it or using it but I would recommend it to all who are based in US or Canada. (Google implemented it in Canada quite recently from what I gather).

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(Pic – Google Girl)

Google India wants to recognize and celebrate women of India in Computer Sciences and related fields. Google thinks Indian women deserve a pat for solving complex engineering problems, doing work that makes an impact, collaborating with smart people, for challenging conventions, and above all for taking risks. What sweetens the whole deal is that the recognition comes along with a cheque for INR 75000 ($1875).

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By Yi-Wyn Yen (Fortune)

Mountain View, CA: Gokul Rajaram, a high-ranking Google product manager who helped launch one of the search giant’s most profitable ventures has left to start his own company.

“I’ve been having the itch to do something entrepreneurial for awhile now,” says Rajaram, 33, known by Googlers as one of the “godfathers of AdSense.” “I’m in my early 30s and I have some experience and financial security, so the time felt right.”

“I have some ideas on the consumer Internet side,” he adds. “I’m still trying to flesh that out in the next few weeks. Right now, I’m just trying to get used to not going to work.”

Rajaram, who left Google on Nov. 2., says he’s also interested in pursuing journalism or writing.

Whatever venture he pursues, he has the blessings of top Google (GOOG) brass Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin. Product management vice president Susan Wojcicki honored him with a large plaque signed by a few hundred Googlers at his farewell party at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., two weeks ago.

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