Before fireworks, people hit the road and fly the skies

As World Cup fans stayed glued to the TV, people in the U.S. geared up for a holiday and commemorated the life of an icon in music. Here’s a look at a few of the trending searches this week, with data from the Google News Lab.

Get outta town

4th of July is coming up in the U.S., and people are skipping town. According to Google Flights data, several of the top trending destinations for 4th of July travel are outside the United States: Moscow, Russia; Ponta Delgada, Portugal; New Orleans, Louisiana; Cartagena, Colombia; and Lisbon, Portugal are at the top of the list. For people who are traveling by car instead of airplane, Google Maps data can tell you the best time to hit the road (and when the traffic will peak), according to your city.

A Justice retires

Upon Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s surprise retirement announcement, people searched to find out why Justice Kennedy was retiring, as well as for his letter to the President sharing the news. The top related search however was for Brett Kavanaugh, a former clerk for Justice Kennedy, and rumored key contender to fill his role.

The Father of the King

Two days after the ninth anniversary of Michael Jackson’s passing, news of family patriarch Joe Jackson’s death inspired a wave of searches for a family that defined American music. Jackson, who initially served as manager of the Jackson 5, had never been more searched than the late King of Pop until this week. When people searched for Michael Jackson’s iconic music this week, the top three songs in the Search charts were “Billie Jean,” “Bad,” and—in number 1—“Thriller.”

The field narrows to 16

In World Cup news this week, Iceland’s fairytale run came to an end and Germany got the boot, causing people to search, “Will Joachim Löw resign?” In the U.S., however, the top search on Löw was inspired by that pesky umlaut: how do you pronounce his name? And bringing it Home(r) with the final query: the unearthing of a possibly prophetic “Simpsons” episode featuring Mexico vs. Portugal led people ask, “How do The Simpsons predict the future?”

Top of the muffin to you!

Searches for “muffin top” went up in Search this week, and not because people are working on their summer bods. McDonald’s announced that the muffin top will now be a part of their breakfast menu, and thought it came in behind “biscuit” and “burrito” in the list of top-searched  McDonald’s breakfast menu items, search interest “mcdonalds muffin top” heated up by 2,850 percent.

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A toolkit to bring digital learning to afterschool programs

GoogleServe, a chance for Googlers around the world to give back

Admin Insider: What's new in Chrome Enterprise, Release 68

If you’ve deployed Chrome Browser or Chrome OS in your business, you probably know that we update the platform roughly every six weeks with new features. To help you understand what these new features and enhancements mean for enterprises, we’ll be publishing regular updates to coincide with the latest Chrome Enterprise beta releases.

To kick things off, here are just a few of the new features available in Chrome Enterprise 68.

Alert users when they visit unencrypted sites.

Security on the web is more important than ever, and we want to do our part to keep businesses and users protected. As we announced in February, Chrome Browser will start to alert users that HTTP sites are “not secure” beginning with Chrome 68. You’ll start to see these alerts in your browser this month, so you may want to consider giving your users a heads up. If you have internal or third-party apps that are still in the process of migrating to HTTPS, and you want to avoid displaying a warning to users, you can also choose to disable this notification on a per-domain basis.

Allow users to sign in through a PIN code anytime

For users who frequently need to log in and out of devices without an accessible keyboard—for example, a retail associate using a tablet—numeric passcodes can be a necessity. Although logging in through numeric PIN has been available on Chrome OS for some time, it was previously only allowable after the first sign-in. With Chrome 68, sign-in through a numeric PIN code is now available at any time. Note that we suggest that you require a minimum of six digits for PINs.

Enable automatic re-enrollment

If managing devices is one of your responsibilities, the occasional loss or theft of a device is inevitable. In the past, if a misplaced device was wiped remotely and then later recovered, a user would need to enter their credentials into that device for it to re-enroll into your domain.

With Chrome 68, managed Chrome OS devices will automatically re-enroll once they connect to a network, eliminating the need for users to enter their credentials to complete the re-enrollment step. This feature will be rolled out incrementally, and will become the default for new customers as well as existing customers who have not changed the default forced re-enrollment setting.

If you choose, you can still require users to enter their credentials to re-enroll recovered devices, and use enrollment permissions to prevent specific users from being able to re-enroll through that process. More information on wiping and enrolling devices can be found on our help center.

To stay in the know, bookmark and visit our Help Center, or sign up to receive new release details as they become available.

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Comprova: investigating misinformation online during Brazilian elections

$2 million for CS & STEM education for aspiring women and student technologists

#IMakeApps: A Spanish acrobat makes the world more accessible for deaf people

Editor’s note: To celebrate the hard work, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of app makers around the world, this week, and over the coming months, we’ll celebrate our Android community by featuring founders, product managers, designers and developers from around the world. We’ll showcase their passions and also hear about what they do when they step away from their computers. Meet our next app maker, Manel Alcaide, a Spanish acrobat, co-founder and CEO of Visualfy. And check out more #IMakeApps stories on g.co/play/imakeapps.

Manel started performing aerial acrobatics in 2008. He has also hosted integration workshops for deaf and hearing children, bringing them together through circus techniques. His passion for making the world more accessible led him to co-found Visualfy, an app for deaf people that translates sounds into visual and sensory alerts.

We caught up with Manel in the small Spanish town of Benissanó, where he runs his tech startup:

When and why did you get involved with technology?
I got into tech through my long-time friend and co-founder Angel Albiach. We both ran an association that brings together deaf and hearing people through circus arts. Angel cannot live without tech and slowly he made me fall in love with it and its potential too, so we decided to combine his expertise in tech and my business vision to build a team that drives social impact through tech.

Why did you decide to set up your company in Benissanó?
Benissanó is a small village near Valencia (Spain), with a population of under 2,000 people. I grew up here, playing around one of the best kept medieval castles in Spain, as my grandparents were the housekeepers. It’s an unexpected place to be running a tech startup but I just feel inspired here, it’s quiet, the air is clean and nights are starry; and there’s top talent to hire, who want to make an impact whilst keeping this lifestyle.

How did you come up with the idea for the app?
I had been working with deaf people for more than seven years. One day in a meeting my smartphone vibrated and one deaf person told me someone was calling me. Without looking at the screen I told him it was a text message not a phone call, and explained to him that I use different sounds for different notifications. That was the moment when we decided to create our first app.

What has been your experience with Android & Google Play?
Android’s openness allows us to create features that are just not possible on other mobile platforms, so we can deliver a much better experience for our users. The wide variety of devices with affordable prices, not just on smartphones but also on wearables with Wear OS, helps us reach more people and have a bigger impact.

How has your app business grown since you started?
Within five months of launching the app and without spending a single euro, we had more than 5,000 downloads in 122 countries. For the past three years we have been creating a hardware solution that works with our app to improve the quality of life and home safety for people with hearing loss. Our team of professionals is now 22 people strong; we work hard every day to make the world a more accessible place.

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Adding “LGBTQ-friendly” and “Transgender Safe Space” attributes on Google My Business

A new report on building opportunities for everyone

A few weeks ago when I was in Cleveland, Ohio, I met Jesse Mason and Helen Qin. They’re the proud owners of Mason’s Creamery, a thriving sweets shop. Just a few years ago, they were struggling to turn their ice cream cart into a permanent storefront business. After a long search, they found an old retail space in the Ohio City neighborhood and used online tutorials to learn how to refab the building. They helped draw foot traffic with a website and advertising. Today, their business is booming and people from all over the city come to try their cutting-edge ice cream. (I tried some—really good!) Jesse and Helen aren’t techies or coders, but they were able to use the internet to help them achieve their version of the American dream.

We hear stories like Jesse and Helen's across the country, which is why we’re fundamentally optimistic about new technology tools. They put knowledge at your fingertips, make daily life more efficient, and drive economic growth. In 2016 six percent of U.S. GDP came from internet companies, creating more than 10.4 million jobs were created across all 50 states—the vast majority outside of Silicon Valley.

But we need to do more to ensure more people benefit from tech advances. Access to opportunity is too often limited by background, geography, income level, or access to education. The reasons for this are complex—globalization and trade continue to reshape markets, and we face major shifts in demographics and labor force participation. Rapid technological change and the growth of automation are also part of the story.

Regardless of the mix of causes, we all have a responsibility to tackle these challenges, not just through public policy, but also through efforts by businesses, communities, and civil society groups.

That is why alongside our products and services, Google invests in a variety of initiatives to help enhance economic opportunity for everyone, whether through Google.org or Grow with Google. We want our philanthropy and our investments to catalyze larger and more scalable community programs. We’ve also started to work with the policy experts identifying public policies that can help successful approaches to grow across the country.

As part of these efforts, we’re releasing a new report—Opportunity for Everyone—that looks at economic opportunity across the United States. The report concentrates on how we can bridge gaps in education, entrepreneurship, and the social safety net.

We’re building on these ideas by piloting and testing different approaches to key challenges, through the products that we build, the programs we manage, and the philanthropy we support. As these initiatives show promise, we hope to work with policymakers as well as business and community leaders to help the best concepts scale. And where we don’t, we’ll be public about that as well, so that others can learn from the results.  The ideas aren’t meant to be a holistic solution, but downpayments on places where we think smart policies and investments can have a big impact. We’re approaching this issue knowing that we‘re not going to have all the solutions, but we’re hoping to contribute where we can.

If you happen to be in Cleveland, I recommend a visit to Mason’s Creamery to hear from Jesse and Helen about how they were able to grow their business—and try the candied pecan. Their story is inspiring. And there are millions of Jesses and Helens out there, dreaming of an ice cream shop or a quilting store or an after-school program for kids. It’s up to all of us to make sure that everyone can access the opportunities that technology brings. We hope today's report can move us a step closer to that goal.

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From basecamp to summit: Achieving new heights with Google Marketing Platform Partners

Earlier this week we announced the new Google Marketing Platform, which brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite into a single solution to plan, buy, measure and optimize customer experiences across channels and devices. But we all know having great technology is only part of the solution. You also need people with the expertise and knowledge to fully take advantage of everything the technology enables. It’s not unlike relying on Sherpas to help guide you from basecamp to the summit. You may be able to make the ascent on your own, but engaging a team of experts with a track record of success greatly improves your chances of making the summit. That’s why we’re excited to announce Google Marketing Platform Partners, a new program designed to ensure you have access to all the resources you need to get the most value from Google Marketing Platform.

A robust ecosystem of skilled practitioners and companies

More than just a replacement for the existing programs, Google Analytics Certified Partners and the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partners, the new program is designed to provide a robust ecosystem of resources, no matter your needs. The foundation of the program is scaled training and capability-building across all the Google Marketing Platform products. Whether you’re looking to build skills in-house or partner with a service provider, the program helps ensure the needed skills and resources are readily available. With more than 500 companies in the program at launch, including leading interactive agencies, system integrators, and top technology, data and media companies, you’ll be able to find a partner to support multiple facets of your business.

Three unique designations

From skill-building to broader, strategic partnerships and technology reselling, the program is designed to deliver the range and quality of expertise you expect:

Certified Individuals:To help increase the talent pool available supporting the Google Marketing Platform, individuals will be able to access a growing library of self-study materials and complete individual product certifications. Successful completion signals an individual’s expertise with specific Google Marketing Platform products.

Certified Companies:Certified Companies provide consulting, training, implementation, operations and technical support services for Google Marketing Platform. These companies not only have individuals certified in one or more products, but they have a high level of knowledge, practical and industry experience, as well as stellar customer references. These strict requirements ensure they have both the expertise and a proven ability to deliver results.

Sales Partners:Sales Partners are Google Marketing Platform experts, just like Certified Companies, but partner more closely with Google in providing consulting and support services, in addition to selling the technology on our behalf.

Get started today

Whether you’re looking to add talent to your team, up-level your current talent, or complement your team with a partner company, Platform Partners offers a trusted source to help close the gaps. And we’ll continue to build out additional skill-building resources, refine our certifications and add new partners covering more countries and languages. To get started on taking your marketing to even greater heights, browse our current Partners to find a partner equipped to help you get the most from your investment in Google Marketing Platform.

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Seven new things you can do with Tilt Brush

Now available: new ways to explore with Google Maps

Lights, camera, cloud: new tools for our media and entertainment customers

Ok Google, ¿cómo será mi día?

If you’ve ever asked Google Home, “Ok Google, do you speak Spanish?” and didn’t quite get what you wanted, we have exciting news for you. Starting today, the Assistant on Google Home can help you get more done in Spanish, whether that’s enjoying music, managing your day, or and controlling smart devices around the house.

Getting a little help at home in Spanish is simple, just tap Menu in the Google Home app, select Preferences in the Settings menu and then select Español. From there, you’ll be ready to:

• Ask about your day with “Ok Google, ¿cómo será mi día?” and get a full rundown of what’s on your schedule for the day. 
  
• Get to know more about the World Cup by asking “Ok Google, ¿cuándo juega México?” or cheer for your team with “Ok Google, dame un cántico de fútbol”.
  
• Listen to your top songs just by saying “Ok Google, reproducir mi lista de reproducción para hacer ejercicio” and start enjoying the hits. 
  
• Turn down the temperature with your voice by asking “Ok Google, sube la temperatura del termostato” so you and your family stay comfortable without leaving the couch. 
  
• Celebrate your birthday asking “Ok Google, cantamé Las Mañanitas”.
  

You can do all this and more in Spanish across all your Google Home products—Home, Mini and Max. And now, Google Home and Google Home Mini are also available in Spanish in both Mexico and Spain.

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Spark student creativity with Chromebook tablets, AR, VR and more

How Google Digital Workshop prepares you for new job opportunities

In 2015, we started the Growth Engine effort in Europe (which became Grow with Google last year) to help people get the right skills to find a job, advance their careers or grow their businesses. So far, we’ve helped 725,000 Europeans and we're committed to help 1 million more by 2020.

As part of this initiative, we offer a wide range of free courses through Google Digital Workshop, offering personalized learning plans on both Google and non-Google platforms. Digital marketing is one of our most popular courses, and for those who take the course, we’ve created a Digital Workshop Certificate (accredited by IAB Europe) to demonstrate your digital marketing proficiency to potential employers and recruiters. More than 300,000 people have earned their certification to date: Sylwia from Poland, who after honing her digital skills through Google Digital Workshop, was promoted to a new position, and Darko, CEO of Slovenian e-commerce platform Ceneje.si, who after completing the training encouraged everyone in his company to develop their digital knowledge and get certified.

Here are some improvements we’ve recently made to the Google Digital Workshop Certificate so that it’s easier for both job-seekers and employers to find new opportunities:

Recruiters can verify your course certification
Each certificate will now have a unique code and personalized URL, so that recruiters can verify that you’ve taken the course.

Show off your certificate
Our newly-designed professional certificate will help you show off a comprehensive digital marketing understanding, either on a CV or LinkedIn profile.

Learn new topics to keep your skills sharp
We’re also adding new topics to the certification, designed to give you a deeper knowledge of content marketing, how to turn data into insights and how to create an online business plan.

These changes will also help employers and recruiters find the right talent for their businesses. At Google, we’re encouraging applicants to get the Google Digital Workshop Certificate as a requisite to apply for junior positions in Marketing and Sales.

With this new certificate, we’re continuing our efforts to bring digital skills and new opportunities to everyone.

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Learn how to build AR experiences with Coursera

Google’s IT Support Professional Certificate enrolls in community college

Almost 40 percent of all undergraduates in the United States are educated at community colleges, and I’m proud to be one of them.

I got my start at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, MO where I received my associate degree and went on to a career in IT support at Google. Today, I’m a Senior Systems Administrator, helping to keep Google’s internal infrastructure up and running. While I enjoy fixing things—a pastime of mine since I received my first hand-me-down Commodore 64 at the age of eight–teaching is my passion.

So last year, I jumped at the opportunity to help develop the Google IT Support Professional Certificate.  This Grow with Google program teaches people the skills they need for an entry-level job in IT support in about eight months. Since its launch in January, almost 40,000 people have enrolled in the program, and Google has funded over 10,000 scholarships to support veterans, refugees, and low-income learners.

Starting this fall, we’re bringing the certificate to more than 25 community colleges in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Texas, California, and New York. To do this, we’re giving a Google.org grant to JFF, a leading workforce development nonprofit. JFF will help community colleges integrate the Google IT Support Professional Certificate into their IT offerings, so that it aligns with the skills that employers are looking for. With these skills, students can jump start their careers in IT Support.  

The field of IT is growing quickly, with many companies looking to hire strong IT talent—there are 150,000 openings for IT Support jobs open in the U.S. alone. I chose to pursue teaching after I got my degree, but many graduates want to jump right into IT at a big company. To help connect students with these job opportunities, we created a hiring consortium which includes Bank of America, Walmart, Sprint, GE Digital, PNC Bank, Infosys, TEKSystems, UPMC, and of course, Google. Today we’re announcing that fourteen more companies are joining this group: Hulu, Cognizant, RICOH USA, MCPc, and 10 Walmart family companies including Allswell, Bonobos, Hayneedle, Jet.com, Modcloth, Moosejaw, Sam’s Club, Shoes.com, Store No. 8 and Vudu.

With all those companies looking to hire top IT talent, there's so much opportunity out there. Community college put me on my path to IT support, and in today's increasingly digital economy, we hope the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program helps others find theirs. For more information on the IT Support Professional Certificate go to g.co/itsupport.

_{“Summary Demand and Requirements by Occupation,” Labor Insight Jobs, Burning Glass Technologies}

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Optimizing Google Classroom for the way you work

Offline sharing now 4 times faster in Files Go

One feature of Files Go is sharing files with people nearby without needing any internet. Today, we’re releasing a major upgrade to this feature—here’s what you can expect:

Easier to find and use: Nearby sharing is now available in its own dedicated tab called “Share.” This tab has a simplified and smoother interface, and it works on any Android phone from the latest Google Pixel back to Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

Faster connections: Thanks to improved connection techniques, the average time it takes to connect two phones is now just five seconds.

Faster transfers: Files Go picks the fastest method of sending files available on your phone, such as 5GHz Wi-Fi Direct, so you get the highest transfer speeds possible. Users have seen speeds up to 490 Mbps—that’s four times faster than before, or 100 original quality photos sent in less than five seconds.

More secure: Files Go helps you verify that you are connecting to the right person and encrypts all your transfers for additional security.

Give it a try with a friend and let us know what you think. Please send any thoughts our way by using the Feedback option in the app.

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Live from ISTE: 12 Google for Education launches to save time for creativity

Introducing the Measure Tool for Google Earth on Chrome and Android

Get verified to manage your presence on Google

Save dinosaurs from extinction in a game world built with Google Maps

#IMakeApps: Meet Niek Bokkers, a Dutch adventurer and creative director

Chatting up your Google Assistant just got easier

More transparency and control in your Google Account

AI takes root, helping farmers identity diseased plants

Supporting migrants and refugees on World Refugee Day

Augmented Reality: a new creative canvas for brands

Investing in Investigative journalism

Investigative journalists depend on a number of digital techniques in their work—from analyzing data on a shared spreadsheet, to identifying the original source of a photograph or picking through the minutes of a public meeting on a local website. As part of the Google News Initiative’s efforts to support high-quality journalism, we want to enable journalists to discover how digital tools can help them delve deeper or get to the facts more quickly. That’s why we’re working with the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) to provide a new program, called “Access to Tools.”

Over the coming months a team of expert trainers will provide up to 20 free workshops across the U.K., each designed to help newsroom and freelance journalists sharpen their digital newsgathering and research skills. The practical workshops will feature technology from a range of providers and include real-life examples, including how individual journalists have traced original sources. We’ll also support the CIJ to host a conference in northern England for the first time, offering advanced skills for journalists living and working outside of London.

Established in 2003, The CIJ offers real expertise in investigative journalism standards and shares the Google News Initiative’s ambition to widen access to tools and training. The director of the CIJ, James Harkin, says: “Our leading concern is to put the best tools in the hands of investigative journalists, and then grow their expertise in using them. Building on our 15 years of expertise in data journalism, advanced internet research, financial search, and internet-powered fact-checking and our relationships of trust with the corporate and independent local media, ‘Access to Tools’ is the perfect way to extend the already impressive reach of our regional network and to get out there into more regional newsrooms, communities, and universities.”

In addition to our work with CIJ, we’ll continue to provide a free range of training workshops directly to newsrooms and journalism schools. Since the launch of the News Lab in 2015, we’ve trained nearly 7 thousand journalists in the U.K. alone—but there’s more to do.

You can learn more about the free U.K. workshops on the CIJ website. For those further afield, our Google News Initiative Training Center has a specific course on Investigative Reporting.

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Powering up connected game development through our alliance with Unity

Whether they’re outwitting opponents in the latest mobile game, exploring massively multiplayer online worlds, or navigating 3D spaces in VR, players want to be connected—to new stories and experiences, to their favorite game creators, and to their fellow gamers.

But it can be challenging to build connected games. Developers find they need to spend valuable time and resources managing infrastructure when they should be doing what they are most passionate about—building great games. We want to help.

Today, we’re announcing a strategic alliance with Unity, a leading real-time 3D game and content creation platform, to simplify game development. Working together, we’re building a suite of managed services and tools for creating connected games, the first of which will focus on real-time multiplayer experiences.

As part of this, Google Cloud will be the default cloud provider for developers building connected games with Unity, helping them to easily build and scale their games. This means developers will be able to take advantage of Google Cloud right from the Unity development environment—from our robust global network that enables low-latency player connectivity, to the ability to quickly scale game servers, to multi-TB memory nodes that can hold massive 3D environments—all without needing to become cloud experts.

We’re also collaborating with Unity to co-found an open source project to connect players in multiplayer games. This project deeply embodies our philosophy for gaming—open source, community-driven solutions built in collaboration with the world’s leading game companies. This project will launch publicly for downloads and code contributions this summer—stay tuned for more in the coming months.

In addition, Unity has announced that it’s currently migrating all of the core infrastructure powering its services and offerings to Google Cloud. Unity will be running its business on the same cloud that Unity game developers will develop, test and globally launch their games.

We hope this alliance helps developers build more connected experiences that delight gamers. We’ll roll out new products and features over the coming months, and in the meantime, you can learn more by visiting the connected games page on Unity’s website. If you’re attending Unite Berlin this week, don’t miss the keynote featuring Google Cloud’s CEO Diane Greene on June 19 at 9:00 AM PT, or watch the live stream online.

We can’t wait to play what you build.

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Five new features to try in Messages

Our 10th Doodle 4 Google winner is dino-mite

Now kids can learn to Be Internet Awesome en Español

Be Internet Awesome helps kids be safe, confident explorers of the online world. Today, we’re launching a number of enhancements to the program, including curriculum expansions, updates to the Interland game, and interactive slide presentations to bring program lessons to life, created in partnership with Pear Deck. We’re also excited to make these important lessons accessible to more families by expanding the Be Internet Awesome program into Spanish as Sé genial en Internet. We’ve invited Araceli Gomez, a STEM educator at South Gate Middle School in Los Angeles, CA, to talk about why these resources are so important for her community.

My career in education began in 1997 at Tweedy Elementary School, in the city of South Gate, CA, where the population is 99 percent Latino. The best part of being an educator in the same city for over 20 years is the relationships I’ve built with families and students in the community. When former students stop by to simply say hello or to share their education and career success, it’s inspiring to know I played a little part in helping them reach their full potential.

Most of the students I work with are bilingual, but their parents predominantly speak Spanish at home. These parents are often seeking guidance and looking for online safety resources. According to new research commissioned by Google, Latino parents in Spanish-speaking households are almost twice as likely as their English-speaking counterparts to favor talking about online safety at home, as a family (39 percent to 21 percent). I’m starting to see more information about internet safety in English, but for most of the families I work with, that information might as well be nonexistent because of the language barrier. That’s a big reason why I’m really excited that Google’s Be Internet Awesome is now available in Spanish as Sé genial en Internet.

With Sé genial en Internet, Spanish-speaking parents in my community and all over the world will now be able to use the program’s tools and resources to help their kids become good digital citizens. Not only will they be able to reinforce at home the lessons we're teaching, they’ll be able to do so in a language they feel comfortable with.

Over the time I’ve been teaching, advances in technology have changed many of the ways learning takes place. Research today is done online, and assignments and homework are given, completed and graded through online accounts. And as a STEM educator, I’m always looking for programs that address the current needs of my students. The Be Internet Awesome curriculum is a great resource because it empowers students with the fundamentals of digital safety in a fun, engaging way they really respond to.

Just as we teach kids right from wrong in the real world, we also need to show them how to interact on the internet. To help make the internet safer for everyone, all families need to be equipped with the right information, resources, and tools to keep the discussion going at home. I’m excited to see Google recognize that need and expand their programs to reach even more kids, families and educators with Sé genial en Internet.

---

¡Explora el Nuevo “Be Internet Awesome” en Español!

“Be Internet Awesome” ayuda a los niños a ser seguros y confiables exploradores del mundo en línea. Hoy, estamos lanzando una serie de mejoras al programa, que incluyen expansiones de planes de estudio, actualizaciones del juego Interland juego y presentaciones de diapositivas interactivas para dar vida a las clases de aprendizaje del programa, creadas en asociación con Pear Deck. También nos entusiasma hacer accesibles estas importantes lecciones a más familias al expandir el programa “Be Internet Awesome” al español con "Sé genial en Internet". Hemos invitado a Araceli Gómez, educadora de STEM en la South Gate Middle School en Los Ángeles, a hablar sobre por qué estos recursos son tan importantes para su comunidad.

Mi carrera en educación comenzó en 1997 en la escuela primaria Tweedy, en la ciudad de South Gate, California, donde la población es 99 por ciento latina. La mejor parte de ser educadora en la misma ciudad por más de 20 años es la relación que he desarrollado con las familias y los estudiantes de la comunidad. Cuando los exalumnos se acercan para decir simplemente hola o compartir su éxito educativo y profesional, es increíble saber que jugué un pequeño papel en ayudarlos a alcanzar su máximo potencial.

La mayoría de los estudiantes con los que trabajo son bilingües, pero sus padres hablan predominantemente español en casa. Estos padres a menudo buscan orientación y  recursos de seguridad en línea. Según una nueva investigación auspiciada por Google, los padres latinos en hogares de habla hispana tienen casi el doble de probabilidades que los que hablan inglés de preferir conversar sobre seguridad en línea en el hogar, como familia (39 por ciento comparado con 21 por ciento). Estoy comenzando a ver más información sobre seguridad en Internet en inglés, pero para la mayoría de las familias con las que trabajo, esa información prácticamente no existe por la barrera del idioma. Esa es una gran razón por la que estoy muy emocionada de que “Be Internet Awesome” de Google está ahora disponible en español:  Sé genial en Internet.

Con “Sé genial en Internet”, los padres hispanohablantes en mi comunidad  y de todo el mundo podrán usar las herramientas y los recursos disponibles en su idioma  para reforzar lecciones importantes en casa y ayudar a sus hijos a convertirse en buenos ciudadanos digitales.

Durante el tiempo que he estado enseñando, los avances en la tecnología han cambiado muchas de las formas en que se aprende. La investigación de hoy se hace en línea, y las asignaciones y tareas se llevan a cabo y son calificadas en línea. Y como educadora de STEM, siempre estoy buscando programas que beneficien y satisfagan las necesidades actuales de mis alumnos. El plan de estudios “Be Internet Awesome" es un gran recurso porque ayuda a los estudiantes los fundamentos básicos de la seguridad digital de una manera divertida y atractiva.

Del mismo modo que enseñamos a los niños a diferenciar entre el bien y el mal en el mundo real, también debemos mostrarles cómo interactuar en Internet. Para hacerlo, todas las familias deben contar con la información, los recursos y las herramientas adecuadas para aprender y continuar la comunicación al respecto en el hogar.  Estoy emocionada de ver a Google reconocer esa necesidad y expandir sus programas para llegar a más niños, familias y educadores con “Sé genial en Internet”.

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Listen up: Google Podcasts is now on Android

#IMakeApps: Meet Faith Ringgold, an 88-year old artist and game maker

Editor’s note: To celebrate the hard work, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of app makers around the world, this week, and over the coming months, we’ll celebrate our Android community by featuring founders, product managers, designers and developers from around the world. We’ll showcase their passions and also hear about what they do when they step away from their computers. Check out more #IMakeApps stories on g.co/play/imakeapps.

Faith Ringgold, an 88-year old artist and creator of Quiltuduko has been a pioneering figure in American art for six decades. She is a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, author, educator and activist. She’s had exhibits in museums and galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

In her 80s she came up with the idea for Quiltuduko, an art making game inspired by the Japanese number game, Sudoku. The rules are simple, the game can be a challenge, but the solution makes art.

This is what she told us when we caught up with her at ACA Galleries:

Why did you decide to embark into the world of technology?
The moment computers became available, I bought one for myself and one for each of my two daughters. When my granddaughter was very young I acquired a computer for her as well. I didn't want them to get lost in the TV and ignore their work. Computers allowed them to get information easily and learn about anything, anywhere, anytime. 

After I received my BA I considered the possibility of getting a masters degree in computer science rather than art. The computer field was new and opportunities were abundant for those interested. To clarify my dilemma, I went to Europe to meet with a group of artists who had left America. I wanted to see if I should do this too as I considered changing my major. In the end I received my Masters in art and art education.​ I love art​.

How did you come up with the idea of Quiltuduko?
I played the game Sudoku often and was impressed. I’ve always loved games and was good at solving puzzles. As I played Sudoku it became apparent to me that it would be better if color and images were used and not just numbers. When the game was finished I wanted to have something to look at​, not just numbers​.  

Early on, I discovered the Kuba design in Africa which repeats colors and images in a similar way as Sudoku. It introduced triangles as well as squares. I love design and decor. I've traveled all over the world being inspired by the designs of other cultures​, especially Africa​. When I created Quiltuduko, 9 images and different colors were used rather than just numbers.  

What was it like for you to work on the game?
Computers are getting more complicated and I'm still keeping up. I was good at computers and loved working on the game. It combines my love of art with my love of computers and puzzles. I love design and figuring things out and wanted to ​embellish the concept of ​Sudoku​ as an art game​.

Do you think mobile apps and games are a form of art?
Yes, definitely.  Quiltuduko is an art game. This game is an expansion of my own art.  These are my original designs and I consider them art, especially when the game is finished you have a work of art that can be printed, framed and enjoyed!

It's all about art and design. I have created original designs for the game but have also used existing works of art that I created in the pattern of Quiltuduko.  

What has been your experience with Android and Google Play?
I like both Android and Google Play. I played Sudoku on these platforms which gave me the idea of Quiltuduko. This game is great for adults to keep one's mind clear and active and it's also good for children​, and people who love art​.

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Say hello to the new Hire, a smarter, faster way to recruit, by Google

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A father-son business is creating jobs, and spreading happiness, through socks

In 2016, Mark and John Cronin started a company with a unique mission: spreading happiness through socks. It was inspired by John's love for colorful socks, or what he calls his “crazy socks.” John has Down syndrome, and when he graduated high school, he wanted to go into business with his dad. And so, John’s Crazy Socks was born.

Like many retail businesses, selling socks is a seasonal business. So to expand their customer base year-round, John and Mark turned to advertising online. Since then, the company has soared. They now ship more than 1,500 orders a day to 44 countries and employ 35 people, 16 of whom have different capabilities. The company donates 5 percent of their earnings to the Special Olympics and supports a variety of other charity partners.  

Watch the video to learn more about how John and Mark are spreading happiness through socks, and check out google.com/retail to learn how retail businesses can grow with the help of Google.

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#ThisisFamily: how we're celebrating Pride

It’s the middle of the middle month of a choppy year and I’m thinking about how we stay steady. I’m thinking about ballasts, the heavy things—weighty, substantive—employed in ships to lend balance. My ballast is my family, and I’m lucky enough to have a few. There’s the family of my blood, those mad geniuses who share my last name; the family of my friends, wild spirits exploring the limits of what’s possible; and, last but not least, the family I walked into when I came to Google.

This Pride, Google and Google’s LGBTQ+ community are celebrating families big and small, chosen or inherited, as part of #ThisIsFamily. We encourage you to post on social media about the people who make up your family (no matter how you define it) and to donate to nonprofits like PFLAG, It Gets Better and GLAAD. Google.org has pledged to match up to $100,000 in total in donations to these three organizations during the month of June.

That’s not the only way we’re celebrating Pride. In typical Google fashion, we’re helping you connect with the world around you (and having a bit of fun) across our products:

• In Google Maps, this year's parade routes are paved with rainbows.
  
• You'll find rainbow "easter eggs" scattered through Google Search and G Suite, and you can join the fun from your desktop by switching your Gmail to a Pride theme for the month of June.
  
• Google Play Newsstand has a special feature page for Pride-related coverage.
  
• On YouTube, we're celebrating the LGBTQ+ creators who are #ProudToCreate a better future with their imagination, creativity, talent, and truth through our YouTube Spotlight Channel, Twitter, and Instagram.
  
• We continue to help businesses declare their establishments "LGBTQ+ Friendly" or "Transgender Safe Space" on their business listings in Google Maps and Google Search.
  
• One year on from our initial donation to the LGBT Center of New York in collaboration with the National Parks Foundation, Google.org is contributing another $500,000 (for a total of $1.5 Million) to the Center to help with the digitization of LGBTQ+ history. The project is called Stonewall Forever, and we need your help to find, preserve, and share the untold stories of LGBTQ+ history.
  
• Google Arts & Culture has a dedicated Pride collection celebrating LGBTQ+ history, with 20 exhibits and over 2,700 artifacts, part of which comes from the Stonewall Forever project. 

Ballasts, like families, help us stay steady amidst comotion. Paradoxically, maybe, these heavy things also lift us up.

Celebrating Pride, from our families to yours.

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Enterprise browser check-up: 6 Chrome Browser policies every IT admin should know

With more than 300 policies available to IT admins, we’re constantly expanding Chrome’s support for enterprises. Here’s a round-up of policies—some old, some new—designed to help IT admins make their organizations more secure and productive.

1. Enforce policies through forced sign-in.

Administrators can decide if they want to set many of their policies at a device level, or manage them by user. But if a user isn’t signed into their Google account, IT is unable to enforce some user-based policies in their organization.

Especially handy for organizations that use G Suite, the Forced Sign-In policy requires users to sign in to their Google account before they can use their browser. This helps you better enforce policies that you want to manage at the user level, for example enabling or disabling password manager or managing outdated plugins. This policy has been available since January 2018 for Windows and since April 2018 for Mac.

2. Make sure your users are running the latest version of Chrome Browser with relaunch notifications.

Chrome Browser automatically updates to ensure users are running the latest version of Chrome, which helps protect businesses against known security vulnerabilities. But if employees are in the middle of working, they might not always restart their browser for the latest updates.

Starting with Chrome 66 (released in April 2018), you can now set a policy that prompts your users to re-launch their browser to finalize updates. You can select from a variety of options for when and how to prompt users, such as indicating whether a restart is recommended or required, or setting forced restarts after a specific number of days. With this policy, IT can balance the need to ensure users are running on the latest, most secure version of Chrome Browser with giving them the flexibility to re-launch at a time that’s convenient for them.

3. Balance security with productivity through extension controls.

The Chrome web store already continuously monitors extensions to detect suspicious activity using Google’s machine learning tools. But many enterprises would like even more granular control.

To help, Chrome Browser allows you to whitelist and blacklist extensions for added assurance. You also have the option to change specific access of an extension, like if you want to specifically prevent an extension from requesting to access a camera. This gives you the flexibility to open up the use of extensions as much or as little as makes sense for your organization.

4. Add additional layers of protection with Site Isolation.

With browser-based threats like universal cross-site scripting (UXSS) increasingly prevalent, it’s always a good idea to consider additional layers of protection. Site isolation ensures that pages from different websites are always put into different processes, each running in a sandbox that limits what the process is allowed to do. It also blocks the process from receiving certain types of sensitive data from other sites. As a result, a malicious website will find it more difficult to steal data from other sites.

Since the release of Chrome 63, Site Isolation has been available to IT admins. Starting with Chrome 66 (released in April 2018), Site Isolation is automatically turned on for some users. If you want to manage centrally, IT can override this via policy.

5. Time updates or handle them manually.

Because Chrome Browser offers continuous release cycles—with new versions available every six weeks—you can rest assured that you’re protected from vulnerabilities without having to wait on manual patches. That said, if your business is performing testing or internal security checks, you may need more control around rolling out these updates.

Chrome Browser allows you to time when these automatic updates happen, or handle them manually so you can pace based on your internal processes or testing schedules. This makes it easier for you to control when updates happen so you can keep your users secure without disrupting business activity.

6. Update your Symantec Security Certificates.

In an effort to help businesses stay secure, we announced a temporary Chrome Browser policy in 2016 to protect those companies that rely on Symantec security certificates pre-dating June 2016. This policy is going away in Chrome 73 (estimated release in January 2019).

If you have this temporary policy turned on, now's a good time to check in on the status of your certificate updates. This will ensure that your users aren't exposed to security warnings when the policy expires.

To configure any of these policies, you can either use Group Policy in your Windows environment with the templates available in the enterprise bundle, or Google Admins can use the management console through Windows, Mac, or Linux computers. Just visit Device management > Chrome > User Settings in the Admin Console, or check out these instructions.

Chrome Browser also now offers release notes so you can stay updated on critical enterprise policies with each release. And if you’re interested in learning more, we’ll have several breakout sessions this year at Google Cloud Next to help you get the most from Chrome Browser. Visit the Next ‘18 website for more information.

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Google AI in Ghana

We've seen people across Africa do amazing things with the internet and technology—for themselves, their communities and the world. Over the past 10 years in which Google has had offices in Africa, we've been excited to be a part of that transformation. Ultimately 10 million Africans will benefit from our digital skills training program with 2 million people having already completed the course, and we’re supporting 100,000 developers and over 60 tech startups through our Launchpad Accelerator Africa. We’re also adapting our products to make it easy for people to discover the best of the internet, even on low-RAM smartphones or unstable network connections.

In recent years we've also witnessed an increasing interest in machine learning research across the continent.  Events like Data Science Africa 2017 in Tanzania, the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba event in South Africa, and follow-on IndabaX events in 2018 in multiple countries have shown an exciting and continuing growth of the computer science research community in Africa.

Today, we’re announcing a Google AI research center in Africa, which will open later this year in Accra, Ghana. We’ll bring together top machine learning researchers and engineers in this new center dedicated to AI research and its applications.  

We’re committed to collaborating with local universities and research centers, as well as working with policy makers on the potential uses of AI in Africa. On a personal note, both of the authors have ties to Africa—Jeff spent part of his childhood in Uganda and Somalia, and Moustapha grew up in Senegal. As such, we’re excited to combine our research interests in AI and machine learning and our experience in Africa to push the boundaries of AI while solving challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, and education.

AI has great potential to positively impact the world, and more so if the world is well represented in the development of new AI technologies. So it makes sense to us that the world should be well represented in the development of AI. Our new AI center in Accra joins the list of other locations around the world where we focus on AI. If you’re a machine learning researcher interested in joining this new center, you can apply as a Research Scientist or a Research Software Engineer. You can also view all our open opportunities on our site.

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Four things we have learned about inclusive marketing

This piece originally appeared in Adweek.

Like every CMO, I spend much of my day in creative reviews. That means I am on the receiving end of a lot of beautiful images. But over the years, too many have been filled with perfect young hipsters, in beautiful houses, living in cool cities. Our products are for everyone, but our images were not telling that story.

We had a problem. So we started a journey to make sure that everyone can see themselves reflected in our creative work. We definitely do not have all the answers. But I want to share what we have learned—sometimes the hard way.

1. The makeup of your team matters

The first step is increasing diversity on the creative teams. As of this year, less than 6 percent of the advertising industry is Black, a figure that has been on the decline since 2010. There is no shortcut here. It takes time to seek out diverse talent. Everyone knows this. But in the rush to fill an open role it can be all too easy to fall back to the usual suspects.

When we are making a hire today, we ensure a diverse range of candidates from a wide range of backgrounds are considered before making a decision. And it is not just your own teams that matter; agency partners are critical too. For example, all too often when meeting with our agencies, I found myself looking at a room full of men. So we started to ask why? And what they could do about it? It is our responsibility to make sure we’re always asking these questions.

When we get this right, it can make all the difference. In another meeting where we were developing concepts for a new-to-market product, an agency lead spoke up about a feature for Hispanic users none of us had considered. He was Latino. His experiences gave him a different lens than everyone else in the room. That’s invaluable.

We also need to inspire the next generation of creatives. I am very proud that this year at Cannes Lions we will be launching a new program called Creative Campus by Google. We’re working with organizations like Livity UK and the Marcus Graham Project in the U.S. to bring students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to Cannes and Mountain View for training and mentoring.

2. Not just a box you can tick

There are so many layers to diversity beyond gender or skin color. It is also about age. Geography. Socio-economic diversity. Relatable jobs. Abilities. Sexuality. Our images had lots of racial diversity. But everyone looked like they worked in tech and lived in hip urban neighborhoods.

To help us do better, we launched a half-day training course with guidance and tools for our teams, from how to recruit underrepresented groups for audience research to thinking about inclusion when defining your target audience. 90 percent of our team and 200 of our key agency partners have taken the training, and we are also launching an e-learning course.

In our work, we also try to reflect the world we live in, not one disconnected from reality. For example, earlier this year we launched a social and digital campaign for the Pixel 2 phone called #QuestionYourLens. We worked with the rapper Logic to create a moment at the Grammys, showing real people and the stories behind their picture perfect images, including their struggle with depression.

3. No women in the kitchen, please!

To tell relatable stories, you also need a deep understanding and empathy for the people you want to reach. Stereotypes are the fastest way to show users you don’t understand them. Across the industry, only 37 percent of people who appear in ads are women. Of those, too many are seen in stereotypical roles. In a recent study, 85 percent of women said ads do not represent their real-world selves.

A while ago, my team brought me a new campaign to review. Dad was cooking in the kitchen. Great, I was proud that they had flipped a stereotype. But the next image showed he was there because mom was in the hospital having a baby! Sorry, dad, but we had to reshoot. Mom was away because she was on a business trip.

And it goes beyond casting. We need to consider every element of creative. Authentic characters matter. But so does music, family dynamics, food, wardrobe, and how products are portrayed. As part of our Chromebooks campaign last year, we spent a lot of time talking with Hispanic consumers. The result, Lo Tuyo es Chromebook resonated with that audience more than anything we had done before.

To make sure we get this right, we have set up an advisory board of 40 Googlers from traditionally underrepresented groups to help guide us. We also think beyond our own creative, to help others tell their story. That's why we worked with Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative to create the Lynching in America project. And why we worked with Pride organizations to create virtual reality tours of 25 Pride parades around the world for people who couldn’t be there in person.

4. Hold yourself accountable

Finally, if we want to make progress toward truly multicultural marketing, we have to put in place the tools and processes to measure and track our progress.

We partnered with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and USC, using machine learning to understand representation in video. Now we are applying similar technology to our own creative. The initial results surprised us: Fifty-four percent of our images featured men—not as heavily skewed as we had feared.

But in other categories, we were further off. A manual analysis showed that the average was around 26, below the national average of 38, and only 10 percent of our web images were Black or Hispanic. We’re using this as a benchmark, so we can make quantifiable progress on our goals.

There is obviously still a long way to go. These are the first steps on a journey we are all on to produce truly inclusive work. An open conversation can help us all get there faster.

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Android Enterprise Recommended accelerates with more devices, new partners

Recently we launched Android Enterprise Recommended, which gives customers confidence to select, deploy and manage devices that meet elevated enterprise requirements. The program empowers organizations to choose the right devices for their organization, knowing they will receive regular security updates and at least one major operating system update, work with zero-touch enrollment, and be available unlocked.

We started with devices from seven OEMs—including Sony, Huawei, LG, Motorola, BlackBerry, Nokia and Google. We’re now expanding the program with new devices and OEM partners:

• The Huawei M5 8.4 and 10.8 are the first tablets validated as Android Enterprise Recommended.

• Two new OEMs have joined the program: Sharp, with the AQUOS SH 10-K, and Sonim with the XP8.

• Existing Android Enterprise Recommended partners have added more devices as well: Sony’s Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact; Motorola’s Moto G6, Moto G6 Plus and Z3 Play; Huawei’s P20 and P20 Pro; BlackBerry’s Key2; and the Nokia 3.1, Nokia 5.1, Nokia 6, Nokia 7 Plus, and Nokia 8 Sirocco from HMD.

With these additions, we now have 39 devices from nine OEMs across a number of price points, from flagship devices to fleet phones to tablets that can be used to make global workers productive.

Companies worldwide have begun updating their device programs around Android Enterprise Recommended requirements. HSBC, one of the world’s largest banking and financial institutions, is using Android Enterprise Recommended to offer their teams a range of devices that meet enterprise-level requirements.

“We are only going to consider supporting Android Enterprise Recommended devices within our ecosystem.” says John Burton, head of product management for client services with HSBC. “For us, that means we can set a baseline for the manageability of the device, the way it's enrolled, level of security patching it gets, and the consistency of the device.”

Analytics firm SAS has also turned to Android Enterprise Recommended program to guide its teams to choose devices that are secure and easy to manage.

“We typically have stayed pretty close to certain OEMs because they tended to do security patches and updates in a timely manner,” says Jay Robinson, the company’s information systems engineer for mobile. “But now Android Enterprise Recommended is essentially doing that for us. We can say, ‘Hey, these are the devices that we recommend for a good management experience.’”

In a recent customer survey conducted by Google, 75 percent of respondents stated that the Android Enterprise Recommended program would play a key role in their future device decisions. The overall response to this program has been outstanding and we look forward to continuing to raise the bar across the Android ecosystem.

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Google Search trends all about Dad

From hobby to business—a dancer takes a leap of faith

It was always Valentina Bagala’s dream to open a dance studio. She took dance classes as a child in Chile, and throughout high school and college. After graduating from the University of Florida, she worked in human resources but felt like something was missing without dance in her life. So in 2013, she and her husband, Rafael Savino, decided to take a leap of faith. They quit their jobs, maxed out their credit cards, and became first-time business owners of a dance studio in Doral, FL—Ascendance Studio.

Doral has a large Spanish-speaking community, so to get the word out Valentina and Rafael realized they needed to advertise online in Spanish. One month after creating Google ads in Spanish, they had 45 new students learning everything from ballet to flamenco. And today, they have around 200 students, a bigger studio, and employ nine instructors. Most importantly, Valentina is doing what she loves most and spreading the love of dance to her community.

Watch the video above to learn how Valentina and Rafael made a dream come true and grew their dance studio with the help of the web.

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Siempre ha sido el sueño de Valentina Bagala el abrir un estudio de danza. Tomó clases de baile desde pequeña en Chile, y durante la secundaria y la universidad. Después de graduarse de la Universidad de Florida, trabajó en recursos humanos, pero siempre sintió que le hacía falta la danza en su vida. En el 2013, ella y su esposo, Rafael Savino, decidieron tomar el mayor riesgo de sus vidas. Renunciaron a sus trabajos, agotaron los fondos de sus tarjetas de crédito y se convirtieron en dueños de su primer estudio de danza en Doral, FL—Ascendance Studio.

Doral tiene una gran población de hispanohablantes, así que para regar la voz de su negocio, Valentina y Rafael se dieron cuenta que tenían que anunciar su negocio en Español. Un mes después de crear anuncios en Google en Español, tenían 45 nuevos estudiantes aprendiendo de todo, desde ballet hasta flamenco. Hoy tienen alrededor de 200 estudiantes, un estudio más grande, y emplean a nueve instructores. Lo más importante es que Valentina está haciendo lo que más ama y compartiendo su amor por la danza con su comunidad.

Mira el video para aprender como Valentina y Rafael hicieron su sueño realidad y crecieron su estudio de danza con la ayuda de la web. Para ver el video haz clic aquí.

by via The Keyword

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“Presente”: Join Lin-Manuel Miranda in supporting Puerto Rico’s recovery

To support ongoing relief efforts in Puerto Rico, Google is now matching donations up to $2 million to the Hispanic Federation and Mercy Corps. We asked ”Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to share his thoughts on why this is important. Read his story below, and donate now at g.co/supportPR.

Puerto Rico is 35 by 100 miles—an archipelago with a main island and two adjacent island-municipalities, Culebra and Vieques. But this tiny paradise has made an outsized impression on the world stage...artists…musicians…major league shortstops…and five Miss Universes. A territory of the United States since 1898, Puerto Ricans, by birth, are U.S. citizens. Right now, there are more Puerto Ricans in the continental United States (over 4.5 million) than on the island, 3.3 million. It’s not surprising that when the island is in trouble, the diaspora says, “presente.” 

Puerto Rico is my second home. It’s where my parents were born. My mom lived there until she was a toddler, and my dad grew up there until he was about 18 and came to New York for graduate school. I had the incredible privilege and good fortune of having them send me to Puerto Rico every summer. My sister and I lived with my grandparents in Vega Alta, a humble town on the northern coast of the island. I used to work at my aunt’s school supply store on the frozen slushie machine.

And Puerto Rico is where Hurricane Maria made landfall on September 20, 2017—the largest hurricane to hit the Caribbean in modern history. The devastation was widespread: most estimates put the damage costs at over $90 billion, the third most costly hurricane ever. In less than 48 hours, 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s agriculture was destroyed and 85 percent of above-ground telephone and internet cables were knocked out.

After Maria made landfall, there was a terrible silence from the island that lasted for days. We looked for any news or pictures on social media. We texted over and over again, hoping our loved ones could find a way to get a message through. For me, it was five days until we heard from any family members; we found a picture of our uncle helping in a supply line in Vega Alta.

Never before has a hurricane done this much damage to the island—to its already fragile power grid, to the way of life, to the land itself. I’ll never forget when we flew to Puerto Rico a month after Maria; seeing bare mountains for the first time was terrifying. 

Nature is already making a comeback—those islands that were brown in the wake of Maria are green again. But due to the unpreparedness for this crisis and the halting attempts to restore power, Puerto Ricans in many parts of the island are still struggling. Power is still not fully restored. And this year’s hurricane season has just begun.

In the nine months since Hurricane Maria, people all over the world have opened their piggy banks and opened their hearts to help. Across the country, many have made their voices heard, demanding action from Congress. It has meant so much. Progress has been made, but there is still work to be done.

Now I ask that you join us once again in supporting economic recovery efforts on the island. Google will be matching donations up to $2 million to the Hispanic Federation and Mercy Corps—two organizations that have been helping people on the ground throughout the relief effort. You can donate now at g.co/supportPR.

I wake up every morning and I’m grateful that my family is from Puerto Rico. I feel an incredible connection to the island, to the people, to the culture, to our spirit, to our resilience. I know many others feel this connection, because you have chosen to help Puerto Rico and ease this crisis. Thank you for joining this effort, and thank you Google for your $2 million challenge grant.

Siempre,

Lin-Manuel

by via The Keyword

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OCTO: Google Cloud’s two-way innovation street

A lot has happened at Google Cloud in the past couple of years. We’ve announced hundreds of new product features, improved our geographic footprint, forged new partnerships, received lots of certifications, and of course, welcomed a lot of new customers. One of the less talked-about moves came two years ago, when we formed the Office of the CTO, or OCTO, a team made up of senior Google technology experts and former enterprise CTOs. But—at least from my admittedly biased vantage point—it’s been one of the most significant.

Before OCTO, if a prospective customer wanted to know how our technology could translate into business value, we had lots of interesting information, but it was very product-centric, and the customer had to synthesize it into practical next steps themselves. And customers aren’t just curious about specific Google Cloud products—they also want to understand how we fit with the rest of Alphabet. For example, an aerospace company wants to hear about Cloud, but also Project Loon, machine learning, Glass for enterprise, Geo and Chrome. Our perspective needs to be inclusive of the full breadth of innovation that Alphabet offers, especially as we continually add new features and educate our customers.

We also met CTOs from outside Google who had a wealth of experience in specific industries, and who wanted to share that expertise more broadly, to increase their impact beyond what they could achieve in a single company. By inviting them to join the Google Cloud Office of the CTO, they would get a seat at the Google engineering table, where all of Google’s technologies converge. That way, they could bring their knowledge and experience to help us think about how to apply those technologies to problems they had faced in their prior industries. For example, how could Google’s data tools help transform call centers and the retail customer support experience? Could the Internet of Things and edge computing improve outcomes for healthcare patients?   

Meanwhile, senior engineers from within Google wanted to join OCTO to get first-hand feedback on their products from their peers and customers in the outside world—and bring insights from those interactions back to shape the future direction of our products.

Initially, we thought OCTO would consist largely of former CTOs from large enterprises. What we learned from our customers in the first year of operations was that it’s good to have a blend of experiences from both outside and inside Google to balance our approach. We also initially thought that one person from our team would pair up with each customer in a 1:1 relationship. But we discovered that no one person can adequately cover and connect all the topics that a customer wants to explore. So we moved from a model centered on individuals to more of a team model. This creates an environment where senior technologists and engineers with diverse backgrounds (high-performance computing, security, AI, containers, productivity, collaboration) can each contribute directly and meaningfully to complex customer challenges. We’ve found that this model makes for much richer collaboration and builds trust faster.

Now, meetings with customers that start out as explorations of feature sets and certifications quickly move to heart-to-heart discussions about where they really want to take their business, and how we can collaborate in a true partnership—an outsourced CTO function, as it were. That’s the magic of OCTO: We’re a safe space for customers to share their hopes and aspirations, have their reality shape our actions, challenge our mutual perspectives, and build their future—without diving into a sales pitch.

Already, OCTO has had a huge impact on Google Cloud, and on the products and services it offers. By working closely with customers, we see their needs and bring that information back to product and engineering, showing them things that they wouldn’t necessarily see. Sometimes we’ll be the ones to push people into the future, for example with our data platforms, or Kubernetes or TensorFlow. But increasingly, it’s our customers pushing us into the future.

We still have a lot of work to do though.Customers are really curious about Google Cloud, but it’s hard for them to keep up with all the new features—how they can use them now and in the future. We spend a ton of time on education, making sure they understand the performance of our platform, the opportunity to mix and match and compose with our tools, and with open source.

One way we hope to expand our reach as a team is by sharing some of the common questions we hear in the field. Watch this space in the coming weeks to hear from other OCTO team members on everything from digital transformation, next-generation identity management, and AI, to industrial computing and serverless architectures.

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Making SAP experiences on Android extraordinary with the SAP Cloud Platform SDK for Android

Building on our SAP partnership: Working together to help businesses thrive

Since announcing our partnership with SAP over a year ago, we’ve done everything from dramatically expanding our certifications to accelerating our co-development efforts with SAP. But integrating Google Cloud with the best of SAP’s enterprise applications is only part of the story. Another development in our partnership with SAP we’re excited about is the range of co-innovation projects we’re working on to help our customers address their biggest business challenges.

Fashion retailer Tory Burch has told us they’re particularly excited about what our partnership with SAP has to offer:

“To support a thriving online presence and more than 150 retail stores around the world, our IT team works closely with industry-leading partners to address our technology needs,” says Serge Minassian, Vice President of Infrastructure and Shared Services, Tory Burch. Working with SAP and Google Cloud on our global applications and systems infrastructure allows us to serve our customers in exciting new ways as well as take advantage of Google Cloud’s machine learning capabilities to gather insights from our data.”

This work with SAP began last year with the introduction of the Data Custodian model, offering customers more visibility and control over how their data is handled when stored on Google Cloud Platform. SAP Data Custodian is now generally available, using Google Cloud Access Transparency and other capabilities to provide insight into where a customer’s data is stored in the cloud, as well as when and where it’s being moved, processed and accessed.

Data Custodian is the first of many collaborations we’ve been working on with SAP.

At SAPPHIRE this week, we’re showcasing how machine learning is unlocking the next generation of apps and infrastructures. For example, we’re working with SAP on solutions for retailers that use Google Cloud machine learning to search images within SAP’s Product Information Network solution to make it faster and easier to procure products from suppliers.

Assortment planning is another area of collaboration with SAP. Together, we’re looking at ways to create a unified decision-making platform by augmenting SAP’s existing assortment planning solution with insights from Google that are based on aggregated search and shopping trends by product category. The Google Shopping Product Suggestions report found in Google Merchant Center shows popular products and reference pricing, and our demo at SAP SAPPHIRE this week shows how this data could be incorporated directly into SAP's MAP solution. We’ll share more on these initiatives in the coming months.

In addition to these efforts, we’re sharing a number of critical updates and announcements at SAPPHIRE.

Managed service offerings for SAP, including larger SAP HANA instances

We’ve heard from many large enterprise customers that they would like managed service capabilities for SAP on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Many of these customers also run extremely large SAP HANA instances on bare metal hosts. Today, we’re announcing that we’re collaborating with our strategic partners to create a managed service offering for SAP that includes SAP HANA instances that can be as large as any certified SAP HANA hardware available in the market today.

4TB VMs now certified for SAP HANA

Many enterprises rely on SAP HANA as their underlying in-memory database for critical tasks like optimizing supply chains, managing real-time inventories, or ensuring that manufacturing lines are running smoothly. For large enterprises, virtual machine instances with large amounts of memory are a requirement for SAP HANA, and we’ve been rapidly scaling our VM sizes to meet this requirement. Today, we’re announcing the certification of the 4TB VMs for SAP HANA. By making these large-scale instances immediately available, and at a low cost, customers get on-demand flexibility alongside GCP’s high availability and performance. This means you can immediately experiment, test and plan your long term roadmap—all while managing costs.

4TB VMs are now certified for HANA OLTP and OLAP workloads, with 2TB and 1TB VMs certified for HANA also available in the coming months. For a closer, more technical look at the SAP HANA ecosystem on GCP, read our post on the GCP blog. And be sure to keep an eye out for more news at Google Cloud Next in July.

SAP Cloud Platform on GCP now generally available

SAP Cloud Platform helps enterprise developers build new applications in the cloud and integrate data and business services from core SAP applications into their applications. SAP Cloud Platform is now generally available on GCP, initially focused on a few GCP regions, and will be expanded based on customer feedback. This release also introduces the availability of SAP Cloud Platform SAP HANA service, a managed database-as-a-service for developers to be deployed via SAP Cloud Platform.

Early access of Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform

The availability of SAP Cloud Platform on GCP opens up a world of opportunities for mobile developers. With Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform, Android developers get a robust new toolset that helps them create native mobile applications directly in Android Studio.

To build Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform, we collaborated closely to align SAP’s design patterns with our Material Design, bringing the Android experience to enterprise developers through the Fiori Design Language for Android. And to make it easy to get started, a plug-in for Android Studio called the SAP SDK Wizard offers a complete reference UI based on SAP Fiori for Android, along with the necessary wiring to connect Android apps to the customers’ system of record. Learn more in this article on Android Enterprise.

New G Suite integration: Export from SAP into Google Sheets

Many organizations use Google Sheets for real-time collaboration, and to take advantage of tools like natural language querying to quickly find insights from their data. In an upcoming SAP release, employees will be able to discover additional insights from their ERP content by exporting data from the SAP GUI (used by ECC 6.0) directly into Sheets. This way, they don’t have to manually export data to CSVs and upload to Drive.

Eighty Cloud Appliance Library solutions now available

The SAP Cloud Appliance Library helps you kick-start projects via a library of SAP business solutions. We’ve collaborated with SAP to add more than 80 solutions to this library as a way for our customers and partners to quickly spin up pre-configured SAP applications on GCP.

Learn more at Google Cloud Next

At Google Cloud Next we’ll share more of our knowledge and best practices integrating SAP applications with GCP. Here’s a little more on what we’ll cover:

• Integrating SAP HANA with Google Cloud Platform—We’ll guide you through hands-on labs which will help you deploy SAP HANA on GCP and build integrated solutions with GCP services.

• Best Practices for SAP Deployments in GCP—We’ll review reference architectures and share best practices for implementing SAP solutions on GCP.

• Lift and Modernize your SAP ECC to SAP Business Suite on HANA and Google Cloud—Migrating SAP ECC applications to the cloud lets you simultaneously modernize your underlying databases and switch to SAP HANA DB. This session will present a simplified approach regardless of how big, data-rich or active the database is.

• Digitize and Automate Vendor Invoice Management by Harnessing Google Machine Learning—Manually processing invoices is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Using SAP and Google Machine Learning technologies, customers can implement automated invoice processing in their SAP system landscape.

You can find more information on our partnership with SAP on our website. And if you plan on joining us at SAP SAPPHIRE, we’ll have plenty of detailed demos that provide a hands-on look at integrating GCP with SAP technology. Please stop by booth 370 to say hello, and be sure to check out the SAP and Google ML Showcase as well. See you in Orlando!

by via The Keyword

Six Google Maps travel hacks to make this your best summer yet

If you’ve been dreaming of pool floats, warm sandy beaches and balmy days, you’re in luck—the long-awaited summer months are finally here. And for many of us, summer means one thing—a chance to get away for some much needed rest and relaxation. For vacation inspiration, we’ve used historical Google Maps data to identify examples of the top mobile searches for places to visit in the U.S. this season. Read on for tips to make sure your trip is smooth sailing from start to finish.

Seek the great outdoors

Taking a hike, setting up camp or stargazing under the open sky at national parks can be a great way to unplug from the world and reconnect with nature. Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon top our list as the most popular U.S. parks to visit this time of year.

Tap into your inner history buff

School’s out but there’s no reason that the learning needs to stop. Whether your wanderlust takes you to Mount Rushmore or the Hollywood Sign, our listof trending historical landmarks can help you keep your history game strong.

Seas the day

There’s nothing like lounging on the beach and watching the waves roll in and out. Check out our list of top trending beaches—from Coney Island to Hawaii, you’ll be sure to find a spot to lay out, catch a wave or snorkel with a school of fish. And it never hurts to have a nice cocktail (or mocktail!) in hand for the ultimate summer experience.

Once you’ve decided on a place to go, here are six ways you can use Google Maps to keep your summer vacation stress free:

• Search for hotels right in Google Maps to see everything you need to know to decide where to stay. You’ll see photos, descriptions, reviews and more—and you can even book a room directly from Google Maps.

• If you’re road tripping, use Google Maps to find your nearest rest stop so you can rest, eat, and refuel during a long drive.

• Flying to a new city? Orient yourself around an airport with Google Maps. A quick search for an airport terminal, say DTW Terminal 2, will show you the lay of the land, including nearby gates, lounges, restaurants and stores.

• Taking local transit is a great way to instantly feel immersed in a new city. Use Google Maps to get navigation times, ETAs and a notification that tells you when to transfer or get off your bus or train, so you can stop worrying about missing your stop and start enjoying the sights.

• If you’re traveling to a place where you don’t have Wi-Fi or a data plan, don’t panic. With Google Maps, you can download a region of the map to access it offline—so you can still search for places, get directions and use turn-by-turn navigation even without connectivity.

• It can be easy to lose your bearings in a new place and spend hours (or what feels like hours!) of precious vacay time searching for where you parked your car. Save your parking location so you can spend less time wondering if your car is parked at D4 or E17.

Summer is here—use Google Maps to help you make the most of it. 🏖☀️

by via The Keyword

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Project Fi now works for your whole family

How CMMS Imaging uses Chrome Enterprise to help employees provide compassionate care

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Derek Georg, Chief Systems Officer for Corridor Mobile Medical Services (CMMS), which provides mobile imaging and lab services to more than 300 medical facilities, such as nursing homes and clinics, in Texas and Oklahoma. CMMS chose Google Chrome Enterprise, Chromebooks, and G Suiteto bring work data and applications to the cloud and to improve employee productivity.

We think of CMMS as a family, even though there’s about 280 of us now. When Steve Nelson, our CEO, started the company, it really was a small family using vans to bring X-rays, ultrasounds, and lab tests to patients who might be unable to visit a medical facility.

When we launched, we described the business as “compassionate, caring, with cutting-edge technology.” That’s especially true today: We’ve upgraded to the newest digital imaging equipment, and when we added lab tests like blood work to our services, the business expanded fast. We’re now serving more than 300 medical facilities from 10 offices across Texas.

As the company grew, we realized the tools we were using, like Microsoft Office and Windows laptops and desktops, weren’t suited to our employees working outside the office. When employees were traveling among our 10 Texas offices, they couldn’t log in to clinical applications without awkward virtual private networks (VPNs). They had to spend a lot of time on the road just to meet with each other—wasted time. Everyone had to work separately on documents until we could meet in person or email each other—and the worst was updating our spreadsheets and merging information about patient visits and client billing.

When I first tested a Chromebook and Chrome Enterprise, it was an eye-opener. I was inspired by how it could help our people work more easily together—how we’d no longer be limited to working from our headquarters: we could work from the road, other offices, and even from home. Just a few months after we adopted Chrome Enterprise, our employees were able to access everything they need—spreadsheets, storage and documents—directly from the dock on their Chromebook home screen. Chrome Browser’s security protections, like safe browsing features and site isolation, also give us peace of mind that we’re less likely to be compromised by external threats.

We also moved our billing and medical imaging storage to the cloud, using G Suite tools like Google Drive to quickly find the documents we need. G Suite can be used to comply with HIPAA, which was an important consideration for us. We have terabytes of imaging data we sometimes need to access, and Cloud Storage Nearline gave us an affordable way to store it.

Recently, we added Chromeboxes and digital screens to our conference rooms so employees could connect using Hangouts Meet. We bought Chromebooks for our execs, and we’re going to roll out more soon as we move away from Windows laptops and desktops. In the future, we may add Chrome OS tablets for mobile lab staff.

Now, when I pass our conference rooms, I can see how employees have changed the way they work. Instead of Post-It Notes and notebooks, they’re using Chromebooks to share notes and ideas with Google Docs and Google Keep, and they meet with Hangouts Meet instead of losing all that time driving to other offices. We’re even using Hangouts for employee onboarding so new hires don’t have to drive to our main office in San Marcos, TX for training.

We’ve also seen changes in how our executives work. When they’re commuting to our Arlington lab for weekly meetings, they use their Chromebooks to stay on top of email and work together on projects. Instead of commuting solo for hours, they can work together in a Wi-Fi-equipped van, gaining eight hours of productivity per person every week: an entire work day.

As we see how Chrome and the cloud are bringing far-flung employees closer together—and adding mobility to their workdays—we’re figuring out new ways to make Chrome OS work harder for us. We’re adding Dialpad, a cloud-based virtual phone system that integrates with Chrome, to our client call center, and we’re also adding in Salesforce—with Chromebooks to come in the future. This way, our call-center workers can better serve our clients—they have access to all the tools they need, like billing and imaging applications, as well as Google Drive records.

From the day we launched CMMS with our first mobile van, “compassionate and caring” were the values we carried through every patient visit. With Google Cloud’s help, we’ve made sure that “cutting-edge technology” is also a company value—one that helps us do good work for clients and patients.

by via The Keyword