"In the past, the only way to view these documents was to download them and open them in a separate viewer application," says Google. "To provide an alternative, we made it possible to quickly and easily view these files as HTML right in a web browser by clicking 'View as HTML.' This was an improvement, but unfortunately the 'View as HTML' option loses some of the formatting from the original PDF, such as graphics, tables, fonts and other elements." The new links are based on the same technology that is used by Google Docs and Gmail. Google says they've actually been rolling out the feature in search results since July, and now they have more than half of the PDFs in their index available this way.

If you're like us, you're probably thinking a lot about how this year's flu season might affect you and your community. To help you out, we at Google.org are excited to announce the expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including much of Europe.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been named the most influential individual in the global technology industry, topping the silicon.com 2009 Agenda Setter's list. Jobs has made pole position on the list for the second time (the first time being in 2003) - the only person to have achieved this feat in the 10-year history of the list. The silicon.com Agenda Setters list is voted for by an expert panel which chooses the 50 people who exert the most influence on the worldwide IT industry. Jobs has made pole position on the list for the second time (the first time being in 2003) - the only person to have achieved this feat in the 10-year history of the list. The silicon.com Agenda Setters list is voted for by an expert panel which chooses the 50 people who exert the most influence on the worldwide IT industry.

Online ad spending has been fortunate in the economic downturn—recession-resistant due to its high level of accountability, Internet ad revenue growth has remained positive as spending in all other media dropped. In the UK, the effect has been so dramatic that online took the biggest slice of advertising revenues in the first half of 2009.

US online ad spending revenues were down 5.3% year over year, to $10.9 billion in the first half of 2009, according to figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “While our preliminary estimates point to another decline in the year’s second half, expect that to be less than the first half’s 5.3% drop,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. On the positive growth side, search spending was up to reach 47% of the total online spend. And online video ad spending. though still small in absolute terms, was up 38%.