High… Eight? The octopus slap heard ‘round the world and other searches this week

Riveting testimony on Capitol Hill, a new name for a favorite chain, and a snack that slaps back (and surprises an unsuspecting kayaker). Here are a few of the week’s most searched trends, with data from the Google News Lab.  

All eyes on the Senate

On Thursday, Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testified alongside Christine Blasey Ford in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill. As the testimony began yesterday morning, searches for the Senate Judiciary Committee spiked by 4,900 percent in the U.S., propelling search interest in the committee to its all-time high since 2004.

Hold the donuts

Dunkin’ Donuts dropped the “Donuts” and announced a rebrand to what most of us already call it: “Dunkin’.” Most related searches came from New England states Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine, which comes as no surprise since the company was founded in Quincy, MA. And while Weight Watchers also rebranded this week (to “WW”), search interest for “Dunkin donuts name” was 150 percent higher than “weight watchers name.” Munchkins, anyone?

Voting 101

Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day and above all, the U.S. wanted to know how. Trending questions included, “How to register to vote?” “How to register to vote online?” “How do I check my voter registration?” and “How do you know if you are registered to vote?” For all of you who helped “how to register” spike by more than 3,600 percent, Search can help. If you search “how to register to vote,” a tool at the top of the results page will help you find information about the voter registration requirements and processes in your state.

LMGTFY

Someone had a birthday this week... and we’re here to answer some of the top trending questions: “Is today Google’s birthday?” “How old is Google?” and “When was Google born?” We celebrated our big 2-0 on September 27 (although the exact date is up for debate), giving us the perfect excuse for a #ThrowbackThursday. Check out 20years.withgoogle.com, where you can dig into historical trends, like how we searched for candy in 1999 more than any other year, or how we have always searched for dogs more than any other animal (sorry, cat people).

Seal vs. Octopus vs. Kayaker

While testing a new GoPro camera, a kayaker in New Zealand was slapped in the face with an octopus by a seal (yes, you read that right). While the kayaker clearly took a hit, it’s been a close fight between the two sea dwellers in Search. ”Seal slap” started trending earlier than “octopus slap,” but the latter has been more popular over time, spiking 4,900 percent in the U.S. It turns out the seal was probably trying to pull off a tentacle as a snack, so maybe we call this one a tie.

P.S. Your humble High Five contributor was so, um, struckby this tale that she wrote a little something in haiku format. You're welcome:

Paddlin’ a kayak
Got slapped with an octopus
A tasty seal meal

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How Gboard is helping European languages in the digital age

Today is European Day of Languages, celebrating the many languages that are spoken every day across Europe, with events ranging from language-learning crash courses to multilingual concerts. And Europe's rich linguistic diversity is increasingly reflected online. For example, regional languages like Welsh and Frisian are more and more commonly used on social media.

We're committed to making technology work in the languages people want to use it in, for as many people across the world as possible. Our focus on bringing technology to as many languages as we can is borne out across many of our products. One example is our keyboard app Gboard, which offers smart keyboards for Android in more than 60 European language varieties, with machine learning smarts like auto-correction and predictive text. In many languages, Gboard also lets you type by voice using speech recognition.

Beyond the 24 official languages of the European Union, Gboard supports many other languages, like Welsh, Corsican, Luxembourgish, Sicilian, Scottish Gaelic, Upper Sorbian, Northern Sami, Manx, and more (see the full list on our help center). And for multilingual users, Gboard supports using multiple languages without changing keyboards, making it easy to use the right language at the right time.

Supporting such a rich array of languages poses its own technological challenges. For example, in some languages, nouns and verbs can have lots of inflectional forms. Learning the nuances of such a rich vocabulary required us to come up with a new approach to language modeling in our machine learning systems. As another example, some European language varieties, like Romansh and Austro-Bavarian, pose challenges to machine learning systems due to their relatively large degree of internal variation, with differences in the way the language is spoken from one valley to the next. For such languages, Gboard's on-device personalization can help you learn exactly your typing style.

Of course, lots of other Google products are available across many European languages. For example, Google Translate can help you break down language barriers across more than 30 languages of Europe. And the Google Assistant is available in 10 European languages, with more on the way. Wherever you are, and whatever language you speak, we wish you a happy European Day of Languages!

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Stitching your trip plans together across Google

Image rights metadata in Google Images

The Android Management API is ready for work, with new use cases and more features

Twenty years of building for everyone

Oh, The Things You’ll Find

New MRC accreditations and partners for Google and YouTube ads measurement

New ways to measure from impression to impact in Display & Video 360

How a Google.org grantee is testing new approaches to global aid

In 2004, our founders wrote that we were not a conventional company and never intended to become one. In that same letter, they set a vision for philanthropy that would contribute significant resources and Googler time to help solve the largest of the world's problems. Out of that tall order, we created Google.org. With other teams at Google, we’ve donated over $1.5 billion since 2005. Also, over the past four years, our Googlers have logged more than 1 million volunteer hours.

Since then we've had the privilege to partner with hundreds of organizations and nonprofit leaders from nearly every corner of the globe. When choosing our grantees, we look for new thinking on how to tackle all sorts of challenges—like closing global education gaps, using data science to improve criminal justice and supporting communities when disaster strikes.Importantly, we also look for organizations that are testing their effectiveness and sharing results transparently with the broader sector to increase understanding of what works.

As we celebrate Google’s 20th year anniversary this month, we’re recognizing the accomplishments of one of those organizations, where the impact of an investment that we made years ago is just coming to fruition.

In 2012, I met GiveDirectly co-founders Michael Faye and Paul Niehaus, who had a thought-provoking idea: what if it’s more effective to give money directly to individuals instead of through philanthropic programming? Enabling beneficiaries to have more of a voice in how to spend aid is not only more empowering, Faye and Niehaus thought, it can be more efficient.

The question sparked the beginning of a multi-year partnership. Since 2012, Google.org has provided $6 million to support unconditional direct cash transfers that benefit people in need and to research the impact of GiveDirectly’s approach. We’ve also had Googler volunteers provide services from engineering help to serving on their board of directors. In 2014, we joined USAID in funding GiveDirectly to study two methods to reduce malnutrition in Rwanda: providing cash directly to people who can choose how to spend it or using the same amount of funding on programs pertaining to water, sanitation, and hygiene and nutrition.

Last week, researchers released the findings. This study found that large cash transfers (~$530 per household) had a meaningful and significant effect on reducing malnutrition while small cash transfers or the tailored programming did not. With more cash, families could expand their children’s nutritional intake, improve the quality of their homes and pay down debt.

This research highlights the importance of evaluating different approaches to solving big problems: weighing the monetary value of cash transfers against the cost of developing other programs to tackle the issue. This evaluation framework is now being used by USAID in several studies. Along with GiveDirectly’s leadership, we hope that these types of studies will help other organizations identify the most effective ways of creating a better world, faster.

We admire GiveDirectly’s willingness to put forward big ideas and work with us to expand our understanding of how we can use capital and technology to support great leaders to improve social outcomes.

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Cruising around a supervolcano lake in Street View

Throwbacks and thank yous on our 20th birthday

We made it to #GHC18! Here’s what Googlers are looking forward to.

All together now: group planning on Google Maps

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Product updates based on your feedback

Working together to fight disinformation online

Today, the European Commission published a Code of Practice on Disinformation in Europe -- a code we helped create. The Code is the next step in the work we’re already doing with experts and publishers worldwide to elevate quality information online and support news literacy.

Today, people have more information at their fingertips than ever before, and a free and open web is a vital resource for web users and businesses the world over. But some seek to exploit the web’s freedoms for harm, including by spreading disinformation—verifiably false information deliberately intended to deceive. Here are five ways we're investing globally to connect people to quality information online:

1. Improving Search to connect people to quality information

People expect to get great results in Search, and we fail in our mission if we surface poor quality or misleading results. We’re constantly evolving our approach to get people to the best and most useful results and over the years, we've invested significantly in protections against ​spam, ​bots, ​and ​other ​attempts ​to game ​our ​search ​results. In 2017, we announced that we’d made improvements to our evaluation methods and algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content. Every year we make thousands of improvements to Search to improve the quality of results for the wide range of queries Google sees every day. In 2017, we ran more than 270,000 experiments, with trained external Search Quality Evaluators and live user tests, resulting in more than 2,400 improvements to Search. To better deal with inappropriate Autocomplete predictions, we launched a feedback tool last year to inform improvements to our systems. We also updated our Autocomplete policies to prevent poor or offensive predictions.

2. Cutting the flow of money to scammers and misrepresentative websites

In recent years we’ve seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of the growing popularity of online news to make money. So we prohibit websites in our ad network from serving ads on misrepresentative content. Essentially this means that you can’t serve ads if you’re pretending to be a legitimate news website based in London when you’re actually a content scammer in a different city. By cutting off the flow of money to this kind of activity, we hope to remove the incentive to create it.

3. Supporting the future of journalism with the Google News Initiative

High-quality reporting by journalists and news organizations is crucial in the fight against disinformation. We’re committed to helping publishers grow their traffic, their audience, their subscriptions and their revenue for the long haul—last year, we paid $12.6 billion to publisher partners and drove 10 billion clicks a month to publishers’ websites for free. In 2015, to sustain innovation in digital journalism, we created the Digital News Initiative (DNI) with a €150million fund. We’ve built products in partnership with publishers to directly address challenges faced by the news industry, from the open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages to optimize content for the mobile web to Subscribe with Google and Player for Publishers, which make it easier for publishers to host and monetize their content. And most recently we launched the global Google News Initiative to help journalism thrive in the digital age, with a commitment of $300 million over the next three years. We believe this will help strengthen quality journalism, evolve business models to drive sustainable growth, and empower news organizations through technological innovation.

4. “Fact-check” labels in Google News and Search

We introduced fact-check labels to Google News and Google Search results to let publishers highlight fact-checked content and help people find and more easily consult articles that provide a critical outlook on claims made by others. Beyond its value to users, this feature helps support the work of the fact-checking community—a fast-growing field, with more than 150 organizations trying to tackle accuracy in the media as well as traditional publishers engaging in fact-checking work.

5. Funding innovation and research into disinformation

Newsrooms, researchers and civil society are also working to tackle this issue. To help these organizations, we’ve funded research; we’re partnering in industry initiatives like First Draft and Cross Check that help newsrooms fight misinformation; and we’re working with newsrooms and other platforms on standards for online credibility through the Trust Project.

We’re clear on our ultimate goal—to get people access to useful and relevant information from authoritative sources. We'll keep working with partners around the world to make it happen.

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Technology for today’s world: helping you reclaim a sense of balance

“Focus on the user and all else will follow.” It’s one of the first principles Google laid out in the early days, and it’s still a guiding force as we build new products. And these days, focusing on the user means understanding that, for many people, technology has become a source of distractions, rather than a useful tool. Research the Android team released earlier this month indicates that mobile devices can create a sense of habit and obligation that is hard to break, even as people look for ways to create a healthy relationship with technology.

With this in mind, over the past year, teams across Google have turned their attention to building features that help you better understand how you use your devices and apps, disconnect when you want, and create healthy habits for your whole family. Here’s a look at some of the ways we’re helping you reclaim a sense of balance and focus on what matters most to you:

Digital wellbeing data and controls for your Android phone

Android 9 Pie lets you see a dashboard of how you’re spending time on your device, including how many times you’ve unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you’ve received. You can also set time limits on apps, like “30 minutes for Chrome.” When you’re close to the limit, you’ll get a nudge reminding you, and when time is up you won’t be able to use the app anymore (unless you cheat!). You can also try Wind down, which helps you remember to stop scrolling and get to sleep. These features are currently in beta for Pixel users.

Digital ground rules for your family

Every year, more and more kids have access to connected devices: according to our research, 75 percent of kids age 6-12 own or share a tablet, and 52 percent of kids age 6-12 own or share a smartphone. Our Family Link app, which is now available in nearly every country around the world, helps parents better manage their kids’ experience with technology. Family Link lets parents set screen time limits, approve or block certain apps, remote lock devices, and view activity reports so they can stay in the loop on how their kids are exploring.

Last week we shared that in addition to using Family Link for children under 13, parents around the world can use Family Link to supervise their teen’s existing Google Account (see applicable age for a teen in your county).

You choose how you YouTube

It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re watching YouTube videos. That’s part of the fun! But for those times you want to set some boundaries, YouTube has added features to help you understand how much time you’re spending in the app and help you take a break. The new Time Watched profile tells you exactly how much time you’re spending in the app, and you can set a reminder for yourself to take a break once you’ve hit a certain amount of time. We’ve also added the option for you to bundle YouTube notifications into one daily digest. You can even choose what time of day you want to see it.

We’ve always aimed to build products that help you get things done efficiently and free you up to focus on the other things that matter to you—from Search, where our goal has always been to get you an answer as fast as possible, to tools like Smart Reply in Gmail which suggest text for you. That’s more important now than ever, and we’ll keep building with that principle in mind.

The world we live in today is very different from the one when Google started back in 1998. We’re no longer using clunky computers to perform simple searches and send basic emails—with the phones in our pockets, we can accomplish things we couldn’t have come close to doing with ye olde desktop. But as technology becomes increasingly woven into our day-to-day, making sure it’s improving life—instead of distracting from it—is more important than ever. That’s focusing on the user, and that’s what we’re continuing to do.

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Personalization features now available in Google Optimize

With the help of Google Search, one woman finds her way

Robin Máxkii always felt caught between worlds—her reservation in Wisconsin, where she lived until age 11, and the urban sprawl of Houston, where she went to high school. During her late teens and early 20s, she maintained a blog, Native Notes, where she wrote passionately about native issues. One day, she received an anonymous comment that would change her life. It stated that if she wanted to actively change the community she wrote about, she should go to college. The seed was planted—she just needed to figure out how.

Robin turned to Google Search and before she knew it, she found her place at a tribal college. There, she became a campus leader, and took internships that helped her advocate for greater access to tech for her community.

Robin’s journey is the subject of our latest episode of “Search On,” Google’s original documentary series that tells the stories of people on a quest for better answers and the magic that happens when they find them at the intersection of tech and humanity. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Google and Google Search, we couldn’t think of a story that better exemplifies the tremendous possibilities that come when people have access to information. Watch Robin’s story above, and read more at g.co/betweenworlds.

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Tips from the people behind your favorite Google products

I’m one of those people who always cuts it close at the airport—it’s a race through security, with just enough time to grab the airline essentials: water bottle, magazine, a soft pretzel if I’m lucky. But I just learned that I can whip out Google Maps to find my way around the airport (by searching the airport name and terminal number), so I no longer waste time running around looking for my snack of choice.

For two decades, Google has built products that make my life more useful. Eight of these products now have a billion users, and with all that extra time at the airport, I got to thinking—how many other unknown tips and tricks are out there? Since Google is celebrating its 20th birthday this month, I present a party favor: tips on Google’s most-used products, straight from the people who helped build them.

Search

• For lovers of covers:Try searching for a song and then tapping “other recordings” for different renditions.
  
• Don’t burn daylight: Make the most of your daylight hours by knowing when the sun will go down. Search [sunset] to get the time the sun will set today.
  
• For content connoisseurs:If you’re a fan of bingeable TV shows or a movie buff, you can see all the places to stream any show or film by searching [watch] followed by the title. (Head’s up: this is available in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Germany and India). 

Emily Moxley, Director of Product Management

Maps

• Beat the crowds:Use Google Maps to find out the estimated wait times and popular times to visit your favorite restaurants and businesses. 
  
• Don’t get lost in the parking lot:If you’ve ever spent way too long searching for your parked car, this tip’s for you. After navigating to your destination, tap on the blue dot and then “Set as parking location” so you can always find your way back to your parking spot.
  
• Quickest route to the airport snacks:If you’re flying to a new place, you can use Google Maps to help you find your way around an airport. A quick search for an airport terminal name, say “SFO Terminal 1,” will show you the lay of the land, including nearby gates, lounges, restaurants and stores.

Dane Glasgow, VP of Product

YouTube

• Just add popcorn:Developed to cut down on glare and give you that movie theater experience, Dark Theme turns your background dark while you’re watching YouTube. It’s available on desktop, iOS and now rolling out to Android. 
  
• Pick your pace:Speed up or slow down the playback of a video by tapping on the three dots at the bottom right of any video. 
  
• Take a shortcut:While watching a YouTube video, use the numbered keys to seek in a video. For example, hitting “2” will take you 20 percent into the video, “6” will take you to 60 percent into the video, “0” will restart the video. 

Brian Marquardt, Director of Product Management

Gmail

• The ultimate to-do list: Open Tasks in your side panel within Gmail, then drag and drop emails to turn your messages into action items. 
  
• Shhhh:Declutter your inbox with Gmail’s mute feature, which pushes the entire conversation to your archive and any future conversations on the thread bypass your inbox to be automatically archived as well. 
  
• Take it back:Don’t fret over embarrassing typos, unintentional reply-alls, or other email taboos. In your Gmail settings, just implement a 5-30 second cancellation period on your sent emails and once you’ve fired one off, you’ll receive a prompt to “Undo.”

Kevin Smilak, Engineering Director

Google Drive

• Give your docs a gold star:Find your favorite Drive items by starring your most important docs within the Drive main menu, and then bookmarking your Starred page. 
  
• File_name_V2:Freeze moments in time by naming different versions of the docs you edit frequently. In a Doc, Sheet, or Slides go to File > Version History > Name current version. Name any version then access it easily from "Version history" by name. 
  
• Your search is our command:Google Drive makes the text within all of the images and PDFs you upload searchable. Try searching for a phrase that you know is inside a picture or PDF, which is especially helpful when you can’t remember your filename. 

Alexander Vogenthaler, Director of Product Management

Android

• Lost and found:If you’ve misplaced your Android phone, Find My Device lets you locate it by signing into your Google account. Or you can call it directly from a browser by typing “find my device” on Google. Lock your phone remotely or display a message on the lock screen, so if someone finds it they know who to contact. If you’re convinced it’s lost for good, you can erase all your data.
  
• Always reachable:Don’t miss any urgent phone calls and messages from important contacts like close family members or your child’s school, even when you have Do Not Disturb turned on. Just add a star to people that matter to you, and then allow calls and messages from “starred contacts only” in Do Not Disturb settings. 
  
• Use your voice:You can ask your Google Assistant to handle tasks on your Android phone (running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or later). Start by saying “OK Google,” then try “take a screenshot,” “turn on flashlight,” or “open WiFi setting.” You can even ask to “take a selfie”—this will open the camera app and start a countdown. Cheeeeeeeese. 
  

Sagar Kamdar, Director of Product Management

Google Play

• When you’re good with faces, but not names:Just hit pause on your movie, tap the circle around the actor or actress's face, and learn more about them and what other movies they’ve been in.
  
• Read like a superhero: When you’re reading a comic on your phone, tap on a voice bubble and use your volume buttons to zoom in on the dialogue between two characters.
  
• What you wish for:You can create a wishlist to keep track of items you want to install or purchase on Google Play.
  

Kara Bailey, Global Merchandising Director

Chrome

• Access history across devices:Open Chrome and click on “History.” From the drop down menu, click “Full History” and “Tabs From Other Devices.” If you’re signed into the same Google account on both your phone and your computer, you’ll see the article you were just about to finish on your way into work.
  
• Keeping tabs on your tabs:You can save eight days of time per year using keyboard shortcuts. Try this one in Chrome: jump between tabs at light speed by pressing Ctrl and the tab number you want to go to (i.e., Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3).
• 👀☝😀 = 🎉. Right-click in any text field for a shortcut to access emoji on any platform Chrome can be found.

Ellie Powers, Group Product Manager, and Chris Beckmann, Product Management Director 

So many tips, so much saved time.

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Proposing a framework for data protection legislation

For nearly two decades, people around the world have used Google to find answers, communicate, build businesses, and more. Our users have long entrusted us to be responsible with their data and we take that trust and responsibility very seriously.

Our investment in privacy and security is evident in every product we build, including the powerful tools we provide to help our users make decisions about their data like the Privacy Checkup. Google products and features cannot launch until they are approved by the specialists in our Privacy and Data Protection Office, which solicits input from across Google, as well as periodically from users and experts worldwide. And our broad commitment to transparency is evident in our newly-refreshed Privacy Policy, which includes informative videos that explain our practices and settings, as well as tools like My Activity that provide detailed information about the data in a user’s Google Account and options for how to control it. Since 2010, our Transparency Report has provided information on how the policies and actions of governments and corporations affect privacy, security, and access to information.

I’m proud of the work we do at Google. That’s why, after almost a decade leading Google's privacy legal team, I've recently agreed to take on the role of Chief Privacy Officer. In this role, I set the priorities for the privacy program at Google, including continually challenging ourselves to make sure our privacy and security tools, policies, and practices are as user-focused as every other aspect of our business. My team’s goal is to help you enjoy the benefits of technology, while remaining in control of your privacy.

This is an important time to take on this new role. Now, more than any other time I have worked in this field, there is real momentum to develop baseline rules of the road for data protection. Google welcomes this and supports comprehensive, baseline privacy regulation. People deserve to feel comfortable that all entities that use personal information will be held accountable for protecting it. And we believe that regulation can support a dynamic marketplace for businesses of all types and sizes.

Today, we’re sharing our view on the requirements, scope, and enforcement expectations that should be reflected in all responsible data protection laws. This framework is based on established privacy frameworks, as well as our experience providing services that rely on personal data and our work to comply with evolving data protection laws around the world. These principles help us evaluate new legislative proposals and advocate for responsible, interoperable and adaptable data protection regulations. How these principles are put into practice will shape the nature and direction of innovation. You can find more detail in this PDF.

Sound practices combined with strong and balanced regulations can help provide individuals with confidence that they’re in control of their personal information. I look forward to discussing these principles and Google’s work on privacy and security with the U.S. Senate later this week, and to working with policymakers and all stakeholders on regulation that protects consumers and enables innovation.

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Improving Search for the next 20 years