Kick-start your New Year’s resolutions with Google Fit

January is fast approaching—and that means it’s almost time for New Year's resolutions, even though most people seem to abandon them about a week into the new year. But if 2019 is the year you want to stick to your goals, you may want to get a head start. In fact, our New Year's resolution is to make it easier for you to get healthy, and have fun doing it. Here's how you can put health and wellness first in 2019, with a little help from Google.

Step 1: Get in the game.

Go to the Google Fit app to join a 30-day challenge designed to kick-start your journey to a healthier, more active life. The challenge begins on January 1, but you can sign up starting today (running shoes optional). You’ll earn Heart Points from activities that you log or actively track with Google Fit. Better yet, Google Fit will automatically detect and log walks, runs or bike rides for you. Your goal is to get as many points as possible—and we’ll be cheering you on along the way.

Step 2: Learn the ground rules.

You’ll score Heart Points for any activity that gets your heart pumping. Get one point for each minute of moderate activity, like picking up the pace while walking your dog, and double points for more intense activities like running or kickboxing. Hit 150 Heart Points per week to meet the American Heart Association (AHA) and the World Health Organization (WHO)’s physical activity recommendations shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, improve sleep and increase overall mental well-being.

Step 3: Get moving.

We hear you: It’s tough to get motivated when it’s cold outside. Here are some ways you can earn Heart Points while you’re going about your winter routine:

• Want to involve the whole family? Go sledding with your kids and earn double Heart Points.  
  
• Skip the snowblower and grab a shovel. Extra points if you do your neighbor’s yard, too.
  
• You’ll probably make a hot cocoa run at some point. Park at the farther end of the lot and squeeze in a brisk walk.
  
• If you find yourself on the mountain this winter, skiing and snowboarding are all intense activities that can earn you double Heart Points.
  
• If the hot cocoa didn’t warm you up, catch a spin class and earn a Heart Point for every minute you’re on the bike.

Step 4: Find a buddy.

For more inspiration, we’ve teamed up with 36 influencers from nine countries around the globe to show us how they’re earning their Heart Points. Follow #GetFitWithGoogle on Instagram and YouTube to see how others are tackling the challenge, or share your own tips and tricks on how you #GetFitwithGoogle with your favorite Heart Points workout.

Are you up for the challenge? Sign-up today in the Google Fit app. If you’re new to Google Fit, try it here to start the year right with Fit.

by via The Keyword

Twas the night before liftoff

How we worked to make AI for everyone in 2018

A Look Back at 2018 with Google Marketing Platform

Deck the halls with help from Google Home Hub

Ahh, the holidays. It's the time of year where you might want to sink into your couch for a movie marathon, but you also have to chase a few toddlers around and get ready to host your entire family for dinner. This season, we’re here to help with a few ways you can take the hassle out of the holidays with Google Home Hub.

Get festive

Quit digging under the Christmas tree to turn on the lights—ask Google Home Hub to do it for you by plugging your lights into a compatible smart plug. Then say, “Hey Google, turn on the Christmas tree,” to watch it light up. While you’re decking the halls, your favorite holiday tunes are only a few words away as well. Just say, “Hey Google, play Christmas hits” to get those sleigh bells ringing (you may need a subscription).

Get the family together

As you’re snapping selfies with the fam, our live albums feature with Google Photos will let you see your best and latest shots on Hub automatically. And while everyone is gathered around, you can relive memories of holidays past. Just say, “Hey Google, show my photos from last December.” Or, you can all curl up on the couch and have Hub tell you a holiday story.

Get ready for Santa

If you’re a parent like me, getting your kids excited about the arrival of Santa is so much fun. If they’re wondering when the presents will start showing up, Google Home Hub can help you track Santa’s arrival starting December 23. Just say, “Hey Google, where’s Santa?” If Christmas Eve is too far away, “Hey Google, call Santa” will connect you to the North Pole, so you can help Santa rehearse for his musical concert.

Get help in the kitchen

Whether you’re crafting a gingerbread house, mixing your favorite holiday cocktail or just trying not to ruin the turducken, use your voice to browse millions of recipes, get step-by-step cooking instructions, set cooking timers and more. With “My Cookbook” you can even save your favorite recipes on Hub for your next holiday party.  

Get things done

The holidays are hectic, so let Google Home Hub be your personal taskmaster. You can set reminders to make sure that you hide the package deliveries and Hub can even remember where you hid your gifts after you wrapped them. If you’re traveling this holiday season, get quick and easy driving and flight info on Hub, with directions sent right to your phone. And, if you’re panicking because one of your present deliveries is delayed, don’t worry—just say “Hey Google, where is the closest toy store?” (insert “jewelry store” as needed).  

Get ready to be the life of the party

My wife tells me that New Year’s Eve is the best time to try a new makeup technique. With Google Home Hub, you can ace any look, hands-free, with help from Sephora. Just say, “Hey Google, show me holiday party looks videos by Sephora.” You can also brush up on the latest dance moves before your New Year’s Eve party with Hub. Try: “Hey Google, show me how to do the floss” and you’ll be grooving in no time. And if you’re the one hosting the party this year, the Nest Hello video doorbell works with Google Home Hub to show you who’s at the front door automatically. Use the new two-way talk back feature to greet your guests to let them know the door is open and the champagne is flowing.

Now that you've gotten everything taken care of with Google Home Hub, get back to the couch and press play on more holiday movies.

by via The Keyword

A slice of Google: looking back on 2018

A Look Back at 2018 with Google Marketing Platform

Four things you might have missed from Chrome Enterprise in 2018

It’s been a busy year for Chrome Enterprise—we welcomed new hardware for enterprises, helped boost workplace productivity, and celebrated ten years of Chrome. Here’s a look at four updates you might have missed from Chrome Enterprise in 2018.

1. We helped businesses prepare for the era of cloud workers

The availability of cloud-based apps and technology has fundamentally changed the way we work, and as a result, many businesses are rethinking the devices and tools they provide their workforce. This year we commissioned a study with Forrester that takes a closer look at the new era of cloud workers. We hosted a half-day virtual event, Cloud Worker Live, to share insights and practical advice, and we’ve made all the sessions available to watch online.

And we also want to help businesses identify the cloud workers in their organization to better support them with the right cloud-based tools. A new Forrester report we commissioned provides key recommendations for workforce segmentation, and we offered some insights on how we do it ourselves here at Google.

2. We launched our Grab and Go program to help businesses stay productive

When an employee’s device isn’t working, it can have more consequences than you think—from the hours employees devote to troubleshooting devices instead of completing projects, to the time IT teams spend on repair and replacement. To address this problem for both workers and businesses, we introduced our Grab and Go program to enterprises in July. Since then, we’ve expanded the program with new partners, and Waymo shared with us how Grab and Go has helped them support their shift workers and dispatchers. You can learn more about Grab and Go on our website.

3. We helped help admins stay up-to-date with Chrome releases

If looking after Chrome browser and devices is part of your job, you probably know that Chrome releases a full OS update about every 6 weeks. Our new Admin Insider series gives you a quick snapshot of the most important changes so you can take action. And if you need even more info, you can now sign up to receive new release details as they become available.

4. We heard from customers all over the world

This year we took a closer look at more than a dozen enterprises that have adopted Chrome Enterprise in every corner of the world. For example, in India and Africa, Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital is making clinical care easier for doctors and their patients by deploying more than a thousand Chrome devices across its 70 facilities. In France, Veolia, a global water, waste, and energy management company, is rolling out Chrome devices to all of its nearly 170,000 employees to increase productivity and collaboration across its offices on 5 different continents. And in Australia, Service NSW is providing better government services through Chrome-powered kiosks.

There’s a lot more to come in 2019. In the meantime, you can learn more about Chrome Enterprise on our website.

by via The Keyword

Google for Nonprofits: 2018 in Review

On the year's darkest day, wake up gradually with Pixel 3 and Pixel Stand

To stop terror content online, tech companies need to work together

Wherever we live, whatever our background, we’ve all seen the pain caused by senseless acts of terrorism. Just last week, the tragic murder of Christmas shoppers in Strasbourg was a sobering reminder that terrorist attacks can happen at any time.

What is clear from such attacks is that we all—government, industry, and civil society—have to remain vigilant and work together to address this continuing threat. While governments and civil society groups face a complex challenge in deterring terrorist violence, collaboration across the industry to responsibly address terrorist content online is delivering progress. And more tech companies must join the fight against terrorist content online.

In June 2017 senior representatives from Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube came together to form the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a coalition to share information on how to best curb the spread of terrorism online. I’ve had the responsibility of chairing this Forum for its initial a year and a half, and I’m pleased to report that the Forum has helped to deliver significant results across a number of areas.

In September 2017 at the United Nations General Assembly, I joined the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and Italy to discuss what more the tech industry could do to combat terrorist content. I was there on behalf of the GIFCT member companies to present our commitments to tackle terrorism online: We collectively pledged to develop and share technology to responsibly address terrorist content across the industry; to fund research and share good practices that help all companies stay abreast of the latest trends; and to elevate positive counter messages.  

We understand that we must responsibly lead the way in developing new technologies and standards for identifying and removing harmful terrorist content. As EU Commissioner Avromopolis said: “The tools you are developing yourselves on your platforms are the most effective counter-measures we all have. That is why I am a strong supporter of your efforts under the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.” A key pillar of GIFCT’s work to drive progress is maintaining a shared database of digital fingerprints (hashes) of known terrorist content that lets any member of the coalition automatically find and remove identical terrorist content on their platforms. In 2018, we set—and achieved—an ambitious goal of depositing 100k new hashes in the database.

Over the past year and a half, we’ve also engaged smaller businesses around the world to discuss their unique needs and to share ways to responsibly address terrorist content online. With the UN’s counterterrorism directorate and the UN-initiated TechAgainstTerrorism program, we’ve worked with more than 100 tech companies on four continents. We also convened forums in Europe, the Asia Pacific region, and Silicon Valley for companies, civil society groups, and governments to share experiences and get suggestions for further efforts.

To enhance our understanding of the latest trends in online terrorist propaganda, GIFCT has been working with a research network led by the Royal United Services Institute. We are speaking with its network of eight think tanks around the world about how terrorist networks operate online, the ethics of content moderation, and the interplay between online content and offline actions. That network will publish ten academic papers over the next six months to benefit everyone working on the problem of terrorist content online.

We’ve also successfully worked alongside governments and Internet Referral Units, like Europol to get terrorist content down even more quickly. With civil society organizations, we’ve developed a tool that will help them mount counter extremism campaigns across many online platforms at once. And together with Google.org, we launched a $5 million innovation fund to counter hate and extremism. The fund gives grants to nonprofits that are countering hate, both online and off. Our £1M pilot program in the UK received over 230 applications, and we awarded grants to 22 initiatives.

These are significant developments for the industry, but we know we have much more to do. The Forum will continue to expand our membership, vastly increase the size of our database of hashes, and do even more to help small companies and academic websites responsibly address terrorist content.

We can never be complacent against the continuing threat of terrorism. The work being done today by our coalition members has helped limit the use of our platforms by terrorist organizations, and we have extended an open invitation to others in the industry to join with us in this effort. Working together, we will continue to develop and implement solutions across the industry to protect our users, our societies, and a free and open internet.

by via The Keyword

A 'First Step' towards criminal justice reform

For the first time in 22 years, Alice Johnson will be home for the holidays. Now a great-grandmother, Johnson was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a first-time, non-violent drug felony in 1997. She had spent over two decades behind bars when her story gained national attention—prompting President Trump to officially reduce Johnson’s sentence and send her home free earlier this year. Johnson’s case set off a long-overdue debate around the country about harsh sentencing laws and the need to reform our criminal justice system.

We’ve long supported efforts to end mass incarceration and help individuals like Johnson get a second chance. In 2017, we collaborated on a YouTube video in which Johnson urged the public from her prison cell to advocate for the release of those serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses. We later partnered with Mic.com to produce a digital op-ed, which caught the attention of Kim Kardashian West and inspired her to take up Johnson’s cause.

America’s thirty-year experiment with mandatory minimum sentences and sweeping criminalization has too often imposed unfair and disproportionate penalties on people across the country. As a former prosecutor, I have witnessed many individuals and families bear the consequences of these policies—policies that haven’t made us any safer, but have cost millions in taxpayer dollars and cast a pall over many lives.

This week, Congress—in a rare show of bipartisan consensus—passed the First Step Act, changing these policies and reforming our criminal justice system. The legislation lowers mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies, reduces the disparity in sentencing guidelines between crack and powder cocaine offenses, and gives judges the discretion to shorten mandatory minimum sentences for low-level crimes. President Trump has already expressed support for the bill, and we look forward to him quickly signing it into law.

The Act marks an important step forward in restoring equal justice and due process, and promoting consistency and fairness in sentencing. Moreover, the Act includes measures that will bolster rehabilitation programs in prisons across the country to help incarcerated women and men successfully re-enter society, reduce recidivism rates, and make our communities safer.

Google.org has long backed these kinds of efforts to improve our criminal justice system. We’ve supported work by non-profits promoting reform and by police departments working to improve interactions with their communities. We have promoted the use of data to increase the transparency of our criminal justice system. And we have launched programs like our digital LoveLetters initiative, which supports children with imprisoned parents.  

While we’re encouraged by the passage of the First Step Act, there is still more work to be done at the federal, state, and local level to improve our criminal justice system. And we all have a part to play. As an example, our company policies seek to promote fair hiring by “banning the box” (requiring job applicants to disclose criminal history only once they get a chance to interview) and encouraging our suppliers to do the same. And we don’t accept ads for bail bonds, an industry with an unfortunate history of predatory practices.

We look forward to continuing to work with people from many backgrounds and across a spectrum of views, united in our belief that America’s legal and criminal justice systems can and should be an example to the world.

by via The Keyword

Introducing the Data Studio Community Visualizations Developer Preview

How Local Guides on Maps helped my new city feel like home

From soil to supper: How technology influences your dinner

This is how we coded: a recap of Europe & Africa Code Weeks

Ending the year on a Fi note

It’s been another great year, more exciting than ever.
It’s time to look back at our biggest moments together.

This year, Fi subscribers got peace of mind with Bill Protection,
And scooped up new phones from our expanded device selection.

We traveled the world with coverage in all sorts of new places,
Thanks to your trusty referrals, we welcomed more smiling faces.

Little ones joined group plans with Family Link—hooray!
It’s easier than ever to customize your plan, your way.

We strive to provide the best privacy and protection,
So we built new network tools for faster, more secure connections.

A celebration! Said “hello” to Google Fi, for our Project was outgrown,
We opened our doors to all sorts of new phones.

We thank you for another wonderful year, and
Now it’s time to share holiday cheer.

Join us for a game with our Fi-nosaur friend
To find your special gift awaiting at the end!

by via The Keyword

The era of the camera: Google Lens, one year in

2018: The Year in Data Studio Community Connectors

It's been a busy year for Data Studio Community Connectors. Since the developer launch, we've added over ten new features, had significant growth, seen partners grow their businesses, and collaborated with the community on open source projects. As we move forward, we're reflecting on what has been accomplished, and what's coming next for Community Connectors.

Where were we last year?

In late 2017, we launched Community Connectorsto allow Data Studio users to connect to their external data and started working with partners to bring access to new data sources. The developer preview provided a platform for developers to build connectors, but there were a lot of features to add and work to do before it was ready for a full launch. This is what we've been busy working on the last year. Since then, we've seen 140+ partner connectors, 500+ data sources, integrated solutions, and fun data sets.

Now that we've delivered on the key improvements and updates highlighted at the outset of the developer launch, we've concluding the developer preview phase. Let's look at what's been added in 2018.

New Developer Features

Throughout 2018, we‘ve added features to improve the connector developer experience and enabled new use-cases.

We introduced the community-connectors GitHub repository as a place to let the community contribute open source connector code.

There are new ways to authenticate a connector. Services that expect username & password, API tokens, or username and API key are easier to add. See Authentication for full details.

Connectors can define the semantic types for their schemas ahead of time. This means your users no longer have to tweak settings on the schema configuration page every time they make a data source from your connector.

The Data Studio Apps Scripts service is now available and provides useful builders & validation to make building a connector a breeze.

Error handling has been vastly improved. Through the Data Studio App Scripts service, you can clearly indicate to a user when something goes wrong (and hopefully how to fix it!).

Some other features worth mentioning:

• Direct links to a connector can pre-populate the config

• Links provided in the manifest description and info config entries are now clickable

• Connectors can force viewers credentials for data sources created from the connector

• Configuration entries can be parameterized so they can be changed without creating a new data source

• Schema fields can be hidden

What Partners Are Saying

Our connector partners and their customers have seen great success with community connectors. Mikael Thuneberg, CEO of Supermetrics, had this to say:

"The focus we’ve put on creating high-quality connectors has been rewarded by the large number of companies around the world who have chosen these as their primary cross-platform marketing reporting tool. [ … ] Data Studio connectors have become an exciting and rapidly growing business area for Supermetrics."

Marc Soares, Manager at Clickinsight, has also seen success through community connectors:

"[Community Connectors have] allowed us to fully take advantage of Data Studio as a central reporting platform. Thanks to community connectors, our analysts spend less time making reports and more time conducting meaningful analysis for our clients."

What's Coming Next?

Next year, we're planning to provide even more ways to configure connectors, extending existing features, and adding more educational content to help you get the most out of community connectors.

If you're new and want to get started making your own connector, check out the codelab and  documentation. To stay up to date with changes and the community, see support for options.

It’s been a great year, and we're excited for what's coming in the future.

by via The Keyword

2018: The Year in Data Studio Community Connectors

It's been a busy year for Data Studio Community Connectors. Since the developer launch, we've added over ten new features, had significant growth, seen partners grow their businesses, and collaborated with the community on open source projects. As we move forward, we're reflecting on what has been accomplished, and what's coming next for Community Connectors.

Where were we last year?

In late 2017, we launched Community Connectorsto allow Data Studio users to connect to their external data and started working with partners to bring access to new data sources. The developer preview provided a platform for developers to build connectors, but there were a lot of features to add and work to do before it was ready for a full launch. This is what we've been busy working on the last year. Since then, we've seen 140+ partner connectors, 500+ data sources, integrated solutions, and fun data sets.

Now that we've delivered on the key improvements and updates highlighted at the outset of the developer launch, we've concluding the developer preview phase. Let's look at what's been added in 2018.

New Developer Features

Throughout 2018, we‘ve added features to improve the connector developer experience and enabled new use-cases.

We introduced the community-connectors GitHub repository as a place to let the community contribute open source connector code.

There are new ways to authenticate a connector. Services that expect username & password, API tokens, or username and API key are easier to add. See Authentication for full details.

Connectors can define the semantic types for their schemas ahead of time. This means your users no longer have to tweak settings on the schema configuration page every time they make a data source from your connector.

The Data Studio Apps Scripts service is now available and provides useful builders & validation to make building a connector a breeze.

Error handling has been vastly improved. Through the Data Studio App Scripts service, you can clearly indicate to a user when something goes wrong (and hopefully how to fix it!).

Some other features worth mentioning:

• Direct links to a connector can pre-populate the config

• Links provided in the manifest description and info config entries are now clickable

• Connectors can force viewers credentials for data sources created from the connector

• Configuration entries can be parameterized so they can be changed without creating a new data source

• Schema fields can be hidden

What Partners Are Saying

Our connector partners and their customers have seen great success with community connectors. Mikael Thuneberg, CEO of Supermetrics, had this to say:

"The focus we’ve put on creating high-quality connectors has been rewarded by the large number of companies around the world who have chosen these as their primary cross-platform marketing reporting tool. [ … ] Data Studio connectors have become an exciting and rapidly growing business area for Supermetrics."

Marc Soares, Manager at Clickinsight, has also seen success through community connectors:

"[Community Connectors have] allowed us to fully take advantage of Data Studio as a central reporting platform. Thanks to community connectors, our analysts spend less time making reports and more time conducting meaningful analysis for our clients."

What's Coming Next?

Next year, we're planning to provide even more ways to configure connectors, extending existing features, and adding more educational content to help you get the most out of community connectors.

If you're new and want to get started making your own connector, check out the codelab and  documentation. To stay up to date with changes and the community, see support for options.

It’s been a great year, and we're excited for what's coming in the future.

by via The Keyword

Most likely to win the creativity contest: meet Jake, Pixel's biggest fan

Go Home Alone Again with the Google Assistant—ya filthy animal

Test your knowledge of the year’s top trends with Game of the Year

Google AI Principles updates, six months in

Six months ago we announced Google’s AI Principles, which guide the ethical development and use of AI in our research and products. As a complement to the Principles, we also posted our Responsible AI Practices, a set of quarterly-updated technical recommendations and results to share with the wider AI ecosystem. Since then we’ve put in place additional initiatives and processes to ensure we live up to the Principles in practice.  

First, we want to encourage teams throughout Google to consider how and whether our AI Principles affect their projects. To that end, we’ve established several efforts:

• Trainings based on the “Ethics in Technology Practice” project developed at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, with additional materials tailored to the AI Principles. The content is designed to help technical and non-technical Googlers address the multifaceted ethical issues that arise in their work. So far, more than 100 Googlers from different countries have tried out the course and in the future we plan to make it accessible for everyone across the company.
  
• AI Ethics Speaker Series with external experts across different countries, regions, and professional disciplines. So far, we’ve had eight sessions with 11 speakers, covering topics from bias in natural language processing (NLP) to the use of AI in criminal justice. 
  
• We added a technical module on fairnessto our free Machine Learning Crash Course, which is available in 11 languages and has been used to train more than 21,000 Google employees. The fairness module, which is currently available in English with more languages coming soon, explores how bias can crop up in training data, and ways to identify and mitigate it.

Along with these efforts to engage Googlers, we’ve established a formal review structure to assess new projects, products and deals. Thoughtful decisions require a careful and nuanced consideration of how the AI Principles (which are intentionally high-level to allow flexibility as technology and circumstances evolve) should apply, how to make tradeoffs when principles come into conflict, and how to mitigate risks for a given circumstance. The review structure consists of three core groups:

• A responsible innovation team that handles day-to-day operations and initial assessments. This group includes user researchers, social scientists, ethicists, human rights specialists, policy and privacy advisors, and legal experts on both a full- and part-time basis, which allows for diversity and inclusion of perspectives and disciplines. 
  
• A group of senior experts from a range of disciplines across Alphabet who provide technological, functional, and application expertise. 
  
• A council of senior executives to handle the most complex and difficult issues, including decisions that affect multiple products and technologies.
  

We’ve conducted more than 100 reviews so far, assessing the scale, severity, and likelihood of best- and worst-case scenarios for each product and deal. Most of these cases, like the integration of guidelines for creating inclusive machine learning in our Cloud AutoML products, have aligned with the Principles. We’ve modified some efforts, like research in visual speech recognition, to clearly outline assistive benefits as well as model limitations that minimize the potential for misuse. And in a small number of product use-cases—like a general-purpose facial recognition API—we’ve decided to hold off on offering functionality before working through important technology and policy questions.

The variety and scope of the cases considered so far are helping us build a framework for scaling this process across Google products and technologies. This framework will include the creation of an external advisory group, comprised of experts from a variety of disciplines, to complement the internal governance and processes outlined above.

We’re committed to promoting thoughtful consideration of these important issues and appreciate the work of the many teams contributing to the review process, as we continue to refine our approach.

by via The Keyword

For girls across the country, learning to code is as magical as Mary Poppins

How Android can help you switch off and enjoy the holidays

Say to مرحبا, msawa, mihofnima or hello! to 500 languages on Gboard

How Gboard helps more than 90% of the planet to type in their first language

Mapping stories with a new Street View Trekker

2018 rewind: A look back at the top stories, moments and research

Draw a line in the snow: using tech with kids around the holidays

For the holidays and beyond, your travel planning guide is here

Google Hudson Square: our expanded New York campus

Today we’re taking the next step in our commitment to our New York City presence by investing over $1 billion in capital improvements to establish a new campus, Google Hudson Square. The over 1.7 million square-foot campus is a result of lease agreements at 315 and 345 Hudson Street and a signed letter of intent at 550 Washington Street.

When we came to New York City almost two decades ago, it was our first office outside of California. It’s now home to more than 7,000 employees, speaking 50 languages, working on a broad range of teams including Search, Ads, Maps, YouTube, Cloud, Technical Infrastructure, Sales, Partnerships and Research.

New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent—that’s what brought Google to the city in 2000 and that’s what keeps us here. Earlier this year, we announced the $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market and shared plans to lease additional space at Pier 57. We hope to start moving into the two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by 550 Washington Street in 2022 once the building is complete. Google Hudson Square will be the primary location for our New York-based Global Business Organization.  

We believe that as our company grows, we have a responsibility to support the communities we call home. That means supporting the infrastructure and services that make our neighborhoods unique places to work, live and play. Since 2011, Google has contributed more than $150 million in grants and employee-matched giving to New York nonprofit institutions. We’ve been ardent supporters of iconic neighborhood public resources such as the High Line and Hudson River Park, and partnered with the New York City Public Library System to provide free Wi-Fi hotspots to public school students and families without home internet access. We recently donated $1.5 million to support the Stonewall National Monument Preservation Project and joined forces with 19 local businesses to establish the Westside Community Fund. And to help foster New York’s burgeoning tech ecosystem, we’ve funded programs like MotherCoders NYC, provided space to organizations like Black Girls Code and hosted Cornell Tech while its permanent campus on Roosevelt Island was under construction.

We’ll continue to deepen our commitments in STEM education, workforce development and access to technology. This coming spring, Grow with Google—our initiative to create economic opportunities for all Americans—will come to New York City with a temporary digital skills learning center on the ground floor of our office on 8th Avenue in Chelsea. Grow with Google will host free hands-on workshops, one-on-one coaching and community events with local partners so that New Yorkers have the opportunity to gain the skills needed to thrive in today’s digital economy.  

With these most recent investments in Google Chelsea and Google Hudson Square, we will have the capacity to more than double the number of Googlers in New York over the next 10 years. Our investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in U.S. facilities, offices and jobs. In fact, we’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it, and this year opened new offices and data centers in locations like Detroit, Boulder, Los Angeles, Tennessee and Alabama. And as we continue to grow across the country, we look forward to calling New York City home for many years to come.

by via The Keyword

How the Google Assistant masters conversations—and you can, too, this holiday season

The latest AdMob updates: making more money with mobile app ads

Holidays at Google

by via The Keyword

Helping families develop healthy digital habits with Chromebooks

Say “G’day” and “Cheerio” to new accents for your Google Assistant

Inside Brazil’s National Museum on Google Arts & Culture

Find a better balance with our tips for Digital Wellbeing

A good tool should make your life easier. That’s as true in the digital world as it is anywhere else. Today, people use digital tools to simplify and speed up tasks from finding a playground for their children to checking the weather forecast, giving them more space to focus on what matters most to them. Technology is transforming the way we spend time, and our Digital Wellbeing efforts can help you make the most of that time—so that technology fits comfortably into your life, without the unwanted distractions. On Pixel, Android, YouTube, Family Link and Gmail, we’ve already released new tools and features to help people better balance their lives. But our products are only part of the story.

To get the word out about healthy habits, we created a new series of Digital Wellbeing videos as part of Google’s Digital Workshop. Each video encourages you to think about how you use technology and suggests ways to find the right balance for you. Because Digital Wellbeing means something different for each of us, we’ve partnered with a team of psychologists, anthropologists and mindfulness experts. There are medical professionals, like Mario Alonso Puig, recognized worldwide for his studies on brain activity, and educators like Greta Rossi, co-founder of Recipes for Wellbeing. By drawing on each of their perspectives, the series takes an honest look at the way we live with tech, from how smartphone notifications affect productivity, to exploring how to set physical boundaries for  technology use, and the ways you can become more self-aware of your online habits.

This course is just the beginning of a wide range of educational materials we’re working on, covering topics from how kids use technology to how to manage mobile phone usage. In the coming months, we’ll make the new course available in more than 30 languages across 64 countries.The next time you need to find a better balance–whether you want to disconnect on your vacation or reduce the number of distractions in your day—check out the videos.

by via The Keyword

AI for Social Good in Asia Pacific

More than 400 million people in the world have diabetes. A third of them have diabetic retinopathy, a complication that can cause permanent blindness. The good news is that this blindness can be prevented if diabetic retinopathy is detected early. The not-so-good news—the illness is often going undetected because people don’t always get screenings. In major part, this is due to limited access to eye care specialists and staff capable of screening for the disease. In Thailand, for example, there are only about 1,400 eye doctors for approximately five million diabetics.

This is a problem that AI can help us solve. A few years ago, we worked with eye specialists in India and the U.S. on an AI system to help doctors analyze images of the back of the eye for signs of diabetic retinopathy. The results were promising. Our AI model now detects diabetic retinopathy with a level of accuracy on par with human retinal specialists. This means doctors and staff can use this assistive technology to screen more patients in less time, sparing people from blindness through a more timely diagnosis. Deploying this technology in underserved communities that don’t have enough eye specialists could be life-changing for many.

We should work to make the benefits of AI available to everyone. Besides rolling out this diabetic retinopathy initiative in clinics in India with our partner Verily, we’ve also been conducting research in Thailand over the past few months. At the AI for Social Good Summit in Bangkok hosted by Google and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) today, we announced a partnership with the Rajavithi Hospital, which is operated by the Ministry of Public Health in Thailand, kicking off a forward looking research pilot using AI to detect diabetic retinopathy in Thailand.

AI’s potential for social good extends to areas beyond healthcare. For several years, we’ve applied Google AI research and engineering to projects in Asia Pacific with positive societal impact, including stopping illegal fishing in Indonesia, forecasting floods in India, and conserving native bird species in New Zealand. We want to support more Asia Pacific organizations in using AI to help society. And we know from experience that when we involve everyone—governments, non-profit organizations, universities and businesses—better ideas emerge.

To gather more of these ideas, we recently launched the Google AI Impact Challenge. Selected organizations who apply to the challenge will receive support from Google’s AI experts and Google.org grant funding from a $25 million pool.

To ensure that all sectors contribute to the responsible development of AI in Asia Pacific, we’re supporting the creation of an Asia Pacific AI for Social Good Research Network with a grant. This network will bring together leading academics from the Association of Pacific Rim Universities to produce research on AI for social good, as well as governance frameworks, to guide the responsible development of AI. The network will also be a forum for researchers to discuss these issues with government, civil society and the private sector.  

Google has long been committed to the responsible development of AI. These principles guide our decisions on what types of features to build and research to pursue. As one example, facial recognition technology has benefits in areas like new assistive technologies and tools to help find missing persons, with more promising applications on the horizon. However, like many technologies with multiple uses, facial recognition merits careful consideration to ensure its use is aligned with our principles and values, and avoids abuse and harmful outcomes. We continue to work with many organizations to identify and address these challenges, and unlike some other companies, Google Cloud has chosen not to offer general-purpose facial recognition APIs before working through important technology and policy questions.

It’s up to all of us to ensure that AI is developed responsibly for social good. We hope that these partnerships will help us achieve that in Asia Pacific.

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Some changes to our service model in Europe

Today, we started notifying our users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland about some changes we’re making to how we provide our services.  These changes will be reflected in updates to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that you can read now, but that will come into effect on January 22, 2019.

The first change we’re making is that for users based in the EEA and Switzerland, Google Ireland Limited—based in Dublin, where Google has its European headquarters—will become the “service provider” responsible for most of our consumer services, from Search to Gmail to Maps and beyond. These changes will be reflected in our general Terms of Service, where the “service provider” that offers these services is currently Google LLC, based in the U.S. We are also making similar changes in the separate terms for Drive, Play, YouTube, and YouTube Paid Service.

We’re also making a number of updates to Google’s Privacy Policy. The most important of these is that Google Ireland Limited will become the “data controller” legally responsible for EEA and Swiss users’ information. This means that Google Ireland Limited becomes responsible for responding to requests for its user data, including from EU law enforcement, consistent with Irish law. It is also responsible for compliance with applicable privacy laws, including Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We’re making the data controller change to facilitate engagement with EU data protection authorities via the GDPR’s “One Stop Shop” mechanism, which was created to ensure consistency of regulatory decisions for companies and EU citizens.

It’s important to note these changes do not in any way alter how our products work or how we collect or process user data within our services. Nothing changes about your current settings, and you will continue to have granular control over the data you share with us when you use our services. And of course, we remain fully committed to compliance with the GDPR across all of the services we provide in the European Union.

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The Year in Search 2018

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Expediting changes to Google+

In October, weannounced that we’d be sunsetting the consumer version of Google+ and its APIs because of the significant challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations, as well as the platform’s low usage.

We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API. We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced. No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.

With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days. In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019. While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users.

Details about the bug and our investigation

Our testing revealed that a Google+ API was not operating as intended. We fixed the bug promptly and began an investigation into the issue.

Our investigation into the impact of the bug is ongoing, but here is what we have learned so far:

• We have confirmed that the bug impacted approximately 52.5 million users in connection with a Google+ API.
  
• With respect to this API, apps that requested permission to view profile information that a user had added to their Google+ profile—like their name, email address, occupation, age (full list here)—were granted permission to view profile information about that user even when set to not-public.
  
• In addition, apps with access to a user's Google+ profile data also had access to the profile data that had been shared with the consenting user by another Google+ user but that was not shared publicly.
  
• The bug did not give developers access to information such as financial data, national identification numbers, passwords, or similar data typically used for fraud or identity theft.
  

• No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the developers who inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.

We have begun the process of notifying consumer users and enterprise customers that were impacted by this bug. Our investigation is ongoing as to any potential impact to other Google+ APIs.

Next steps for Consumer Google+

We will sunset all Google+ APIs in the next 90 days.  Developers can expect to hear more from us on this topic in the coming days, and can stay informed by continuing to check the Google+ developer page.

We have also decided to accelerate sunsetting consumer Google+, bringing it forward from August 2019 to April 2019.  We want to give users ample opportunity to transition off of consumer Google+, and over the coming months, we will continue to provide users with additional information, including ways they can safely and securely download and migrate their data.

A note for our enterprise customers

We are in the process of notifying any enterprise customers that were impacted by this bug. A list of impacted users in those domains is being sent to system administrators, and we will reach out again if any additional impacted users or issues are discovered.

G Suite administrators are always in control of their users’ apps. This ensures that G Suite users can give access only to apps that have been vetted and are trusted by their organization. In addition, we want to reiterate that we will continue to invest in Google+ for enterprise. More details were announced in October.

We understand that our ability to build reliable products that protect your data drives user trust. We have always taken this seriously, and we continue to invest in our privacy programs to refine internal privacy review processes, create powerful data controls, and engage with users, researchers, and policymakers to get their feedback and improve our programs. We will never stop our work to build privacy protections that work for everyone.

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Cloud covered: What was new in Google Cloud for November

In November here in the U.S., we felt some Thanksgiving gratitude that there’s never a dull moment in cloud technology. We’ve been keeping track of what’s new and quickly evolving, from AI and ML tools to storage and databases. Here are a few of the highlights from last month in Google Cloud.

There’s a new way to make a Google Doc.

Here’s a new, time-saving (and dare we say, fun?) way to create a Google Doc when you’ve got to get your ideas down on the page immediately. Type in doc.new, docs.new or document.new into your web browser and it’ll bring up a new Google Doc. See how it works.

The New York Times uses Google Cloud to digitize its photo archive.

The New York Times photo archive, nicknamed “the morgue,” contains more than a hundred years’ worth of photos—five to seven million in all. The paper built a processing pipeline using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) products to digitize, organize and easily search those photos. See some of the pictures and read more on their plans.

Asia Pacific cloud users can access GCP data faster.

We were excited to announce the opening of our Hong Kong region last month, and plans for the Jakarta region, to bring faster access to GCP data and apps for users. Locating your company’s data closer to a cloud region means you can transmit that data faster, with lower network latency. Find your own location latency here.

Non-data scientists can now experiment with AI and ML.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are hot topics in tech these days—but how do you even start using these concepts? Our new central AI Hub is now in its first stage of availability, offering pipelines, modules, and other preconfigured ML content. Check out real-world examples of AI and ML, like using data analytics to predict health problems or predict potential hazardous driving areas in Chicago.

We put forth our principles for building ethical AI.

AI is a fascinating technology, full of great potential. It’s also still a technology built by humans, dependent on us to input data and train models. We’re considering AI principles every step of the way, and working to eliminate bias from AI models, use AI for positive results, make sure AI is interpretable by humans, and helping businesses prepare for a future with more automation built in. Find out more about how we’re creating AI ethics at Google.

We described our microservices vision.

A microservices architecture is one where discrete, single-purpose software units are the basis to build large, distributed apps that work in both hybrid and on-prem situations—especially interesting as businesses continue to run their IT operations both in their own data centers and with cloud resources. Using container technology means developers can deploy new apps faster, and lets developers use that microservices architecture more easily. The missing piece has been a management layer. Read more on how Istio fills the gap.

For all of what we covered in November, check out the Google Cloud blog.

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Proposed copyright rules: bad for small publishers, European consumers and online services

Copyright rules give news publishers rights over how their work is used. Europe is updating these rules for this digital age, and that’s a move Google supports. But the European Parliament’s version of a new copyright directive -specifically Article 11 and its recital 32- will have unintended consequences for smaller news publishers, limit innovation in journalism and reduce choice for European consumers. We urgently call on policymakers to fix this in the final text of the directive.

Let us be clear on one thing: Article 11 seeks to protect journalists and their work, and we agree with that goal. We care deeply about supporting the broader news industry because journalism is critical to the functioning of a free democracy. And we built Google to provide everyone with equal access to information.

However, Article 11 could change that principle and require online services to strike commercial deals with publishers to show hyperlinks and short snippets of news. This means that search engines, news aggregators, apps, and platforms would have to put commercial licences in place, and make decisions about which content to include on the basis of those licensing agreements and which to leave out.

Effectively, companies like Google will be put in the position of picking winners and losers. Online services, some of which generate no revenue (for instance, Google News) would have to make choices about which publishers they’d do deals with. Presently, more than 80,000 news publishers around the world can show up in Google News, but Article 11 would sharply reduce that number. And this is not just about Google, it’s unlikely any business will be able to license every single news publisher in the European Union, especially given the very broad definition being proposed.

This would mostly benefit larger players. One analysis hasforecast that in Germany, small publishers would receive less than 1% of the revenue generated by a so-called ancillary copyright -- whereas the largest publishing group alone would receive 64%. Smaller newsrooms and overall online news diversity will be impacted as a result.

Because so much of the conversation in Brussels is driven by larger publishing organizations, the small publishers who raise this concern are not heard. Why are large influential companies constraining how new and small publishers operate? Particularly at a time when news business models continue to evolve, new, small, and innovative publishers need flexibility. The proposed rules will undoubtedly hurt diversity of voices, with large publishers setting business models for the whole industry. This will not benefit all equally.

Not only might this harm individual news publishers, it also seriously risks reducing consumers’ ability to discover and access a diversity of views and opinions. Unlike people in other parts of the world, European citizens may no longer find the most relevant news across the web, but rather the news that online services have been able to commercially license. We believe the information we show should be based on quality, not on payment. And we believe it’s not in the interest of European citizens to change that.

Today we drive economic value to publishers by sending people to news sites over 10 billion times a month. That free traffic has enabled many smaller or emerging publishers to get discovered, grow a business, and find success online. A Deloitte study found that each user visit was worth on average between €0.04 and €0.08 to publishers. That means real business value to European publishers, every year.

We recognize the news industry is undergoing substantial change as publishers around the world transition to digital. We’ve been working with EU institutions to develop workable solutions that benefit journalists and publishers. We’ve invested in creating tools to help publishers increase subscription revenue and enable mobile sites to be much faster, so that they can grow their audiences and their revenue. Thousands of news publishers use Google advertising services where they retain 70% and more of the revenue that’s generated.

There is a way to avoid the unintended consequences of Article 11. The copyright directive should give all publishers the right to control their own business models and destiny by giving them the choice to waive the need for a commercial license for their content. Publishers – big and small – should continue to be able to make their own choices about how their content can be discovered and how they want to make money with that content. The exact language of the new rules is being determined in the next few weeks. Now is not the time to stifle innovation in news or limit access to quality journalism.

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Defying stereotypes: Jason’s journey learning how to code

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Jason Jones, a recent graduate of The Last Mile, a program that prepares incarcerated individuals for successful re-entry to the job market through business and technology training. Today, Google.org announced a $2 million grant to The Last Mile, which will allow the program to expand to prisons across the United States, and to establish its first program in an Indiana juvenile facility, Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility. Now that more people will be able to benefit from this program, Jason wrote a letter to future students to help prepare them for their journey.

Dear students,

My name is Jason Jones and I am a software engineer; however, that wasn’t always the case. For the majority of my life, I was whatever stereotype that public opinion thought would fit: at-risk, system impacted, low-income; the list goes on. I’m 35 years old and recently released from prison after 13 years.

I come from a broken home, where gangs became family and the streets became my household. In 2014, while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, I entered The Last Mile program with no understanding of the opportunity it presented. It gave me a home and my new family. No one could have told me that this one decision would turn my life around.

Before The Last Mile, I had no idea what coding was or how technology worked. I had no real plans of rehabilitation or changing my mind set. Through coding, I was able to redefine how people perceived me. I became part of another underrepresented group: a person of color in tech with a non-traditional background.

Through the program, I found classmates, instructors and volunteers who were genuinely invested in my education and in me as a person. We spent thirty-two hours each week learning skills like JavaScript, web development, team collaboration and how to navigate the workplace. I discovered mentors and positive role models who I could go to with problems or for advice.

Since graduating from the Last Mile, I signed a contract with a tech company that was interested in my success, and I relocated to a better place for growth and prosperity. And just two months out of prison, I’m able to travel on a plane for the first time in my life, visit parts of the country I’ve never been, and do things that I thought were out of my reach.

This process has been anything but easy. It takes a lot of hard work, commitment, discipline, focus and sacrifice.

I’ve faced a lot of adversity in my life, but coding gave me a different approach to solving problems. It taught me how to break down the larger problems into smaller, workable ones and create a workflow that leads to a solution. I’ve learned better communication skills and how to collaborate successfully on a team. I’ve learned how to break down some barriers that were stunting my growth and learned how to ask for and accept help. But most of all, I’ve learned how to take control of my life and set the direction in which it is going.

All of you have the opportunity to reimagine what you want your life to look like—always be your best self and believe in the process. This keeps me on a positive path.

Yours truly,

Jason Jones

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Live from the North Pole: what's new at Santa's Village

New partners and courses to develop tomorrow's workforce

At Google, we’re committed to creating more opportunity for everyone. Through our Grow with Google initiative, we’ve trained 7.5 million people in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on digital skills since 2015. But we’re doing more than just training—we want to help people put these new skills to use, which is why we’ve also committed to helping 1 million Europeans find a job or grow their business by 2020.

To reach this commitment, we offer free online and offline courses through Google Digital Garage across 64 countries. Up until now, digital marketing has been the core of our training, but as the nature of work changes and the demand for a broader set of both technical and soft skills grows, we believe it’s critical to incorporate these skills into our programs.

New courses to help people succeed in the workplace

We're partnering with FutureLearn, The Open University, OpenClassrooms and Goodwill Community Foundation, leading providers of online education, to expand our current modules with new training on soft skills. These include social and emotional skills, such as communicating with others, motivating and influencing teams and colleagues, and making decisions under pressure; skills crucial for success in any career and increasingly valued by employers, according to the latest research from the World Economic Forum.

Here’s a closer look at the courses we're launching today:

• Learn techniques for public speaking : Learn how to plan and deliver presentations that capture the attention of your listeners, whether it’s sharing a business plan or motivating your employees or colleagues.

• Communicate your ideas through storytelling and design: Ideas become more powerful when they’re shared. This course will help you discover simple tools like mind maps, storyboards and storytelling to help you engage people with ideas.

• Business communications: Learn how to craft clear, well-structured emails, presentations or reports.

• Effective networking: Whether you’re running a business, looking for a job, or ready for that next career move, learning how to network is key. In this course, we will introduce you to the principles of networking, to help you develop your professional brand.

In the coming months, alongside our partners, we’ll make the new courses available on Google Digital Garage in more than 30 languages in 64 countries.

Get certified with Google Digital Garage

We know that when looking for a job, certifications are often essential in demonstrating acquired skills to potential employers. Today, The Open University, the largest academic institution in the UK, a leading European university, and a world leader in flexible distance learning, is adding their high-quality accreditation to our Google Digital Marketing Certificate. The certificate, already accredited by IAB Europe, provides jobseekers with a tangible way to demonstrate their skills, and is awarded to learners completing the free online training course available at Google Digital Garage.

By partnering with leading providers of online education, we are confident we will have a greater impact in helping learners and businesses gain new skills and training for the workplace. We look forward to expanding our collaboration with industry partners to help even more people grow their skills and see their careers or businesses thrive.

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Building a better internet experience together with Indonesia

One of my favorite snacks is made by Rina Trinawati, a 45 year old entrepreneur from Indonesia who bakes cookies for a living. I like them because they’re not just a treat for the tastebuds. Her business, Tin Tin Chips, employs mothers of children with disabilities. Since Rina learned how to market her cookies online, orders have shot up 75 percent. Rina now employs 25 women and donates 50 percent of her profits to organizations caring for children with disabilities.

Indonesia has the largest and fastest growing internet economy in Southeast Asia. And Indonesians everywhere are getting involved—they’re building the companies that create jobs, provide goods and services, and make life better for everyone. Today, at our annual Google for Indonesia event, we announced the next round of products and partnerships to help us move forward together with Indonesians in the internet economy.

A more accessible internet for Indonesians

Using the internet for the first time can be daunting. We’re making it easier for first-time smartphone users to discover the web with Google Go, an AI-powered app that showcases the latest Search trends as well as Indonesia’s most popular apps and websites. Google Go makes using the internet as easy as watching TV by allowing people to listen to any webpage being read out aloud.

But there’s no point in web pages being read aloud if you don’t understand what’s being said. Less than one percent of the content on the internet is in Bahasa Indonesia, while more than half of all online content is available in English. To help close this gap, we are collaborating with Wikipedia on a new way to make English-only content accessible and useful for Indonesians. Now, our systems will identify relevant Wikipedia articles that are only available in English, translate them into Bahasa Indonesia using Google’s AI powered neural machine translation system, and then surface these translated articles in Search.

Speaking of talking AI, we launched the Google Assistant in Bahasa Indonesia in April. Now, we’re taking our Indonesian-speaking Assistant out of smartphones and putting it into feature phones. WizPhone is the first feature phone made by Indonesians that will have the Google Assistant built in and it will retail at less than $10 (IDR 99,000).

A more useful internet for Indonesians

The Assistant is becoming even more useful—and even more Indonesian—because of our partnerships with Indonesian businesses. For example, you can now ask the Assistant to Book a Ride in Indonesia––no more opening apps and typing in addresses or tell it to give you the news. With News Briefings, Indonesians can now hear the latest news hands-free and on-the-go from five Indonesian media outlets we partnered with.

To help connect those business owners with job seekers, we’re introducing Jobs on Google Search. Starting today, searches for “job vacancies,” will surface job listings in Indonesia, with options to organize them by different criteria like job type and distance.

And to support Indonesians in getting the skills to excel in the new jobs within the internet economy, we announced a new commitment to train a further one million Indonesian small and medium businesses by 2020. This is in addition to the one million that we have already trained since 2015.

A safer internet for Indonesians

We want Indonesians to have access to more information. But we want it to be better information—and that comes from high-quality Indonesian journalism. We’ve already trained 2,000 journalists through the Google News Initiative and we’re training another 3,000 more by next year. As part of the CekFakta.com, Google News Initiative training includes fact-checking and verification best practices, plus how to fight misinformation.

Having better information is great, but using that information responsibly is greater. So that the next generation of Indonesians use the internet responsibly, our philanthropic arm Google.org is making a grant of $875,000 to non-profit organizations Maarif Institute, Peace Generation, RuangGuru and Love Frankie to teach more than 12,000 students to champion tolerance, multiculturalism, and positivity.

These are just a few of the announcements from today that we hope will build a more accessible, useful and safer internet together with Indonesians. We’re excited to keep on working with Indonesia to realize the benefits of the internet for every Indonesian and every Indonesian business.

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New tools to automate enterprise app distribution with managed Google Play

Managed Google Play provides a simple, standard way for enterprises to deliver applications to their organizations. It offers a secure and familiar interface to share both internal and third-party apps with managed Android devices.

Automating the app distribution process is an efficient method for quickly getting apps out to your team, and today we’re highlighting how Google tools can now make that simpler and faster with the addition of fastlane support via the Custom App Publishing API.

App automation with fastlane

As part of the Firebase mobile development platform, fastlane offers a set of developer tools that help automate app builds and releases. Now, fastlane supports managed Google Play by integrating with the Custom App Publishing API.

The open source fastlane platform offers a suite of app automation tools that can automate screenshots, manage beta deployments, as well as sign and push apps to the Play store. It helps save time, as it can configure and run releases without building custom release tools.

Give it a try if you’re looking to automate multiple aspects of your workflow. The documentation for fastlane provides specific details for developers.

Quicker custom app publishing

The Google Play Custom App Publishing API is another key tool for enterprise mobility management (EMM) providers, third-party developers, and other organizations that want to enable their enterprise customers to publish private apps directly from their end-user interface.

The key benefit is the ability to automate the creation of apps, without any code, which enables enterprise customers to publish and distribute private apps to employees even faster.

Getting started

It’s now easier to deploy and manage your private enterprise apps with managed Google Play, which provides access to the world’s largest app ecosystem. With fastlane, you can quickly deploy your applications without the need to code the solution. However, if you prefer to write your own software and integrate your own tools, you can use the Custom App Publishing API.

For more technical information, see our blog post on our Android Developer publication that details how developers can take advantage of these tools.

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Bringing eSIM to more networks around the world

With eSIM,  getting wireless service is as easy as turning on your phone. Gone are the days of going to the store to get a SIM card and fumbling around to try and place it into a small slot. With eSIM, we hope to bring you instant connectivity across more carrier networks, and devices in the Google ecosystem—from Android smartphones to Chromebooks to Wear OS smartwatches.

Pixel 2 was the first major smartphone with eSIM, and now, on Pixel 3,  we’re expanding eSIM support to more carriers. If you’re in the U.S. and would like to purchase a phone that has eSIM, head over to Google Fi or the Google Store. If you’re in Germany, look out for the ability to purchase Pixel 3 with eSIM functionality from Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone soon. Sprint in the U.S., EE in the UK, Airtel and Reliance Jio in India, and Truphone and Gigsky in various countries will also roll out eSIM support for Pixel 3 in the coming months.

To enable a consistent and simple experience across the ecosystem, we’re also creating a program that allows Android device makers to build eSIM-capable smartphones. We look forward to continuing our work with our partners on the potential benefits of eSIM—whether that’s getting you connected to a phone, watch, tablet, or laptop—in the future.

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Announcing Google Play’s “Best of 2018”

As 2018 comes to a close, Google Play is sharing the year’s top content across apps, games, movies, TV and books. Whether you were watching “Black Panther” wishing Wakanda was a real place, or imagining what you’d do if you were thrown into “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” 2018 has been filled with nonstop entertainment.

For the first time ever, we’ve added a new “Fan Favorite” category, giving you the chance to vote for your favorite game, app and movie of the year. And the votes are in! Thanks to you, “PUBG MOBILE,” “YouTube TV” and “Avengers: Infinity War” have been crowned as the first-ever Fan Favorites in the U.S.

Check out Google Play’s full lists below for this year’s most loved content in the U.S. You can also discover all of the lists on the Best of 2018 section of the Play Store.

Fan Favorites of 2018

• Game: PUBG MOBILE

• App: YouTube TV

• Movie: Avengers: Infinity War

Best App of 2018

• Drops: Learn 31 new languages

Best Game of 2018

• PUBG MOBILE

Top five movies of 2018

• Black Panther

• Avengers: Infinity War

• Thor: Ragnarok

• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

• Deadpool 2

Top five TV shows of 2018

• The Walking Dead

• Riverdale

• The Big Bang Theory

• The Flash

• PAW Patrol

Top five ebooks of 2018

• Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

• The Outsider by Stephen King

• Fear by Bob Woodward

• 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

• Girl, Wash Your Face

Top five audiobooks of 2018

• 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

• Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

• Fear by Bob Woodward

• Becoming by Michelle Obama

• The Outsider by Stephen King

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