Protect your budget and your brand with Display & Video 360

Moving toward a gender equitable internet

Sharing what’s new and coming next with Android Enterprise

We’ve built Android to help power the connected workforce of the future. With a growing lineup of Android Enterprise Recommended devices and services, leadership in mobile security and flexible platform tools, Android gives organizations plenty of options. At Google Cloud Next ’19, we shared more about how Android can benefit your organization, and offered a preview of some of the features we’re working on for Android Q.

If you weren’t able to attend the event, or would just like a refresher on any of the sessions, here’s an overview of the ones that are now available on YouTube:

• What’s New and Next in Android Enterprise: Android has become the platform of choice for enterprise mobility. According to IDC, 78 percent of business phones shipping in 2019 will run Android. In this session we discussed how we balance security and privacy to provide an optimal user experience.

• How Android Enterprise Recommended can simplify your mobility strategy: This Google-backed program is making it simpler to deploy and manage Android devices across an organization and is becoming a key factor in mobility purchase decisions.

• How Android has Redefined the Approach to Mobile Security:  Learn how Android enterprise-grade protections and controls can help ensure that devices and data are secure.

• How Android Enterprise is Disrupting Mobility: In this session, we talked about how Accenture and Google used Android Enterprise and Google Cloud technologies to accelerate productivity.

• Privacy & Wellbeing: A New Approach to Mobility: Android Enterprise features were built with employees in mind, delivering industry-leading privacy and digital wellbeing features.

• Beyond the smartphone: New Use Cases for Android: Learn how Android devices are used and managed across industries to transform workflows and improve data sharing.

• Web vs Native—Choosing the Right Approach For Your Digital Journey: Get guidance on how to best implement mobile web and native application technologies into your organization.

My engineering team’s work on Android Q has focused on an improved end user experience, more controls for IT, and enhanced security tools. For example, we've addressed many top feature requests, such as an API for consolidating personal and work calendars and separate input methods for work and personal apps.

As 2019 rolls on, we’re looking forward to continuing Android’s momentum and impact on organizations of all sizes.

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How a Google office became a sticky-note art gallery

Newsmakers: Storytelling through numbers with Alberto Cairo

After school, this teen tracks climate change with NASA

An update on our workplace commitments

Editor’s note: Today, our Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker sent an email to Google employees about progress made to improve our workplace. You can read the note in its entirety below.

It’s been nearly six months since we announced several changes to improve our workplace. I’ve been working on these commitments from day one and I’m pleased to share we’re marking the completion of six of them today.

I recently stepped up to lead Employee Engagement in addition to our diversity, equity and inclusion teams. Making good on these commitments and pushing the company to meet our OKR to progress a representative and inclusive workplace are my top priorities. I care about these issues deeply. I’ve dedicated myself to this work for my entire career, and I’m proud to lead this work at Google.

A big part of my job is to listen to ideas that Googlers have and take feedback on ways we can improve our workplace. We won't implement every idea that our employees (or the outside world) raise, but we always listen, and we consider constructive feedback. For example, earlier this year we announced we will no longer require current and future Google employees to arbitrate employment disputes. We made significant improvements to the standards we require for our temp and vendor workforce.  I will be meeting regularly with Google’s leaders and Alphabet’s Board of Directors to discuss these important issues. And I promise to keep you all updated on our progress. These are all big changes that I hope show our real commitment.

Here’s what we’re announcing today:

• We’ve simplified and clarified the way employees can raise concerns by bringing multiple channels together on a new dedicated site. We’re also providing a similar site for our temp and vendor workforce, which will be completed by June.
• We just published (internally) our Investigations Report, the fifth annual summary of employee-related misconduct investigations, including discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, with an expanded section on sexual harassment investigations.
• After a four-month pilot, we’re expanding our Support Person Program so that Googlers can bring a colleague to harassment and discrimination investigations.
• We’re rolling out a new Investigations Care Program to provide better care to Googlers during and after an investigation.
• We’re sharing a new Investigations Practice Guide outlining how concerns are handled within Employee Relations to explain what employees can expect during the investigations process.
• We are publicly sharing our workplace policies—including our very clear policies on harassment, discrimination, retaliation, standards of conduct, and workplace conduct.

The commitments we made in November aren’t just about changing policies or launching new programs. We want every Googler to walk into a workplace filled with dignity and respect. Thank you all for the feedback and ideas you’ve shared with us.

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Why "healthy" materials are key to Google's new buildings

This National Tell a Story Day, take a page from your Assistant

Get lost in the new Earth Timelapse, now on mobile

Level up on Android with Indie Games Accelerator

A new way to find work-from-home (or wherever) opportunities

From food waste to tasty treats in Google’s kitchens

Step into Childish Gambino's world with augmented reality

Touring Bird takes flight in 200 destinations worldwide

Google Fit is now on iOS

More ways to find authoritative information in Europe

Six ways your Google Assistant can help you spruce up for spring

Spring is in the air, which also means it’s the season to freshen up your home. If you’re like me, cleaning your house doesn’t top your list of favorite things to do—but it still needs to get done. This year, get a little help from your Google Assistant on your phone, speaker or Smart Display—so you spend less time cleaning, and more time enjoying the outdoors.

As we bid adieu to winter layers and welcome longer, warmer days, here are six ways your Assistant can help with spring cleaning:

1. You can’t get something done if you don’t remember to do it. Set a friendly reminder to tackle your cleaning projects around the house. Just say, “Hey Google, remind me to clean my closet” or “Hey Google, remind me to store my winter clothes.”

2. Kickstart your cleaning session by setting up a custom routine so your Assistant automatically gets things done for you—like playing your cleaning playlist (because music makes even the most mundane chores better!), turning on your Whirlpool or Samsung dishwasher, and starting a load of laundry with Whirlpool, LG, GE or Samsung connected appliances. It’s easy to get this set up in your Assistant app for Android or iOS and link smart devices: Just add a custom command like “let’s start cleaning” and then add each action you want your Assistant to take (e.g. start the washer). Once complete, say, “Hey Google, let’s start cleaning,” and watch each action start at the same time.

3. Who said cleaning was a one-person job? Broadcast a message via the Assistant on your phone or voice-activated speaker (like Google Home) to get some help from your family. Say, “Hey Google, broadcast ‘it’s time to clean!’” to rally your family. They can even reply back to let you know they’re on their way.

4. Delegate tasks by telling your Assistant exactly which room to clean. If you have an iRobot i7 Roomba, simply say, “Hey Google, vacuum the kitchen” or “Hey Google, vacuum the living room.”

5. In the middle of a cleaning session and almost out of cleaning supplies? Just ask the Assistant to get more. Give it a go by saying, “Hey Google, order more disinfecting wipes” or “Hey Google, order more paper towels.”

6. With all of this cleaning, chances are you’ll have clothes or other household items that you want to give away. To find the nearest drop-off, just ask, “Hey Google, where is the nearest donation drop-off?”

While the Assistant can’t do all of the cleaning for you, it can help you streamline the process and make organizing your home more enjoyable.

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Finding a place to charge your EV is easy with Google Maps

Our commitments to the environment, today and every day

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Steps toward a more sustainable future

People perform trillions of searches on Google each year, upload hundreds of hours of videos to YouTube each minute, and receive more than 120 billion emails every week. Making all of these Google services work for everyone requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work, like operating a global network of data centers around the clock and manufacturing products for people around the world.

It’s not only our responsibility to build products and services that are fast and reliable for everyone, but also to make sure we do so with minimal impact to our planet. So this Earth Day, we’re taking inventory of the progress we've made when it comes to sustainability and where we plan to do more.

We’ve scaled up our use of renewable energy.  

• In 2017, we hit a goal that we set five years earlier and matched 100 percent of the electricity consumption of our operations with purchases of renewable energy. This means that for each unit of energy we used that year, we purchased an equivalent unit of energy from a renewable source, such as wind or solar.

• When we buy renewable energy, we only do so from projects that are constructed for Google. This helps us bring on new clean energy supply to the grids where we operate our facilities.

• Today, a Google data center uses 50 percent less energy than a typical data center, while delivering seven times more computing power than we did five years ago.

• We use AI to help safely run our data center cooling systems—already this has resulted in 30 percent energy savings.

• We’re weaving circularity into our operations.  In our data centers, we use components from old servers to upgrade machines and build remanufactured machines with refurbished parts.

We build products and services that help others become a part of the solution.  

• To date, Nest Thermostats have helped people save a total of more than 35 billion kilowatt hours of energy—that’s enough energy to power the city of San Francisco for three years.

• Researchers and policy makers use our Google Geo platforms to better take care of our plane. Product like Google Earth Engine help people combat overfishing, monitor forest change and protect the freshwater supply.

• Businesses that switch from locally hosted solutions to G Suite have reported reductions in IT energy use and carbon emissions up to 85 percent.

• Organizations that move IT infrastructure and collaboration applications, like Gmail and Google Docs, from a self managed data center or colocation facility to Google Cloud reduce the net carbon emissions of their computing to zero.

Our sustainability work isn’t over. When we think long term, we’re working toward directly souring carbon-free energy for our operations-—24 hours a day, 7 days a week—in all the places we operate. Already, we’re working with governments and utility companies to chart a course toward making a 24x7 carbon-free grid  a reality so more companies and people can decrease their carbon footprint. We know that it is the right path forward, and we have just begun.  

Along the way we’ll continue to find more ways to protect our planet with our sustainability efforts. Follow along with us in this collection that we’ll be updating all week long in celebration of Earth Day.

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Being a mom is hard work. Becoming one is, too.

For seven years, Mother’s Day was the worst day of the year for me. It was an observance that felt completely out of reach, yet commercially and socially it was a reminder that I couldn't escape. I wanted to be a mom, but I was having trouble becoming one. For my husband and I, the inner walls of our bedroom became clinical, timed and invaded by fertility specialists. The outside world didn’t understand what we were going through—they saw us as a couple who decided to "take their time" to start a family. I began doing my own research and found out that 1 in 8 women in America are struggling, too. There are over 7 million of us who want a child but have a disease or other barrier that stands in our way.

Using Google and YouTube, I found support groups, blogs and resources. I wasn’t as alone as I thought—like many, I had been silent about my struggles with infertility. It’s a less-than-tasty casserole of heartache, injections and surgeries, failed adoption placements and financial devastation.

So I learned how to be my own advocate. I’ve spoken out, written articles and—most recently—lent my voice to the video above to raise awareness about the barriers to building a family. I want to better educate people on how to support their friends and family who are struggling with infertility.

As today marks the start of National Infertility Awareness Week, I—along with the other brave women in this video—am dedicated to sparking a bigger conversation, and overcoming the stigmas and barriers that surround infertility. I'm excited Google is using its platform to help put this message out into the world ahead of Mother's Day. I hope that this year, even one more person out there will realize they’re not alone.

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Go green with your Google Assistant

It can be hard to know how to chip in and make a difference to protect the environment. You can recycle, take shorter showers, or carpool to work—and now you can lower your carbon footprint just by asking your Google Assistant.

With new advancements in smart home technology, it’s actually pretty easy to incorporate energy and water-saving actions into your daily routine (and save some money while you’re at it). This Earth Day, we’re sharing a few ways the Assistant can help make your home more environmentally-friendly.

Simple ways to save energy and automate

1. Switch to LEDs. Swapping out just five incandescent bulbs with LED lights can save you up to $75 per year—plus, LEDs also last up to 50 times longer than incandescents, with a total life of at least 35,000 hours. Even better, pairing ENERGY STAR-certified smart bulbs like Philips Hue with the Assistant can help you control the lights with just your voice, or set lighting schedules to use electricity only when you need it.

2. Choose ENERGY STAR certified appliances. Did you know that appliances contribute to a quarter of your home’s energy use? To optimize how that energy is used, choose an ENERGY STAR-certified brand like LG, GE Appliances, Samsung or Whirlpool, and connect it with Google Assistant to easily control appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, ovens and air purifiers. Certain window air conditioning units and ceiling fans also work with the Google Assistant: Just say, “Hey Google, turn off the fan” to a Haiku fan as you leave a room or schedule your LG, Midea or Toshiba AC to turn off at the same time each day.

3. Upgrade your thermostat. Many utilities offer rebates on smart thermostats because they make saving energy easy. Smart thermostats like the Nest Learning Thermostat can save an average of $131 to $145 a year (of course, individual savings are not guaranteed). That’s because Nest thermostats make smart, automatic temperature adjustments to save energy based on your habits. And you can even say “Hey Google, set the thermostat to eco mode” to make your home even more efficient.

4. Monitor and protect from leaks. According to the EPA, the average family can lose 9,400 gallons of water annually from household leaks alone. To curb this waste, you can use leak detectors like LeakSmart, or install Flo by Moen to immediately get notifications if pipes leak, and use the Assistant to shut off the water.

5. Curb your outdoor water use: You can still keep your lush lawn looking beautiful while using less water. Smart sprinkler systems like the Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller reduce water usage and now work with the Assistant, so you can easily control and monitor these systems with simple voice commands. As part of your Routine, you can also set the sprinklers for early morning or at night to prevent evaporation. We’re also adding support for Rain Bird’s family of Irrigation Controllers in the coming weeks.

How to set up everything with the Assistant

Download the Google Assistant or Google Home app and then click “Add device.” You can get started right away with commands like “Hey Google, turn down the temperature” with your Nest Thermostat. Or set up quick Routines that can help you automate energy savings by controlling multiple devices with a single command.

Our commitment to supporting families and the environment  

There are lots of changes we can make as individuals to combat climate change, but we're taking steps as a company to reduce energy in U.S. households, too. ThePower Project is our pledge to bring one million Nest thermostats to low income families by 2023. Along with a coalition of partners—nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity and the National Housing Trust and energy companies like Georgia Power— we’ve installed Nest thermostats in homes over the last year to help families reduce their energy costs. This year, the Power Project is expanding to include partners Philips Hue and Whirlpool. Along with Nest, they’ll donate thousands of energy-saving technology products to Habitat for Humanity in the coming year. You can join us in providing energy-saving technology to those who need it most in your community by donating to nonprofits at nest.com/powerproject.

Making consistent changes to reduce energy consumption in our day-to-day lives is the key to long-term conservation; even the smallest changes add up to measurable impact. With Google Assistant and the right energy-saving technology, these changes are easier to make than ever.

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From kids' music to the tech world, without missing a beat

Visit the U.S. National Parks in Google Earth

Presenting search app and browser options to Android users in Europe

On World Heritage Day, explore historic sites in 3D

Spring into healthy habits with help from Google Home

Spring is (finally) here. Not only am I using the warmer weather and longer days as a reason to clean out my closet, but I'm also taking the opportunity to clean up my routine and stick to my wellness goals. I'd like to read one book per week, cook more healthy recipes for my family and get at least seven hours of sleep per night… with a full time job and two toddlers. Life is a lot to manage, so I use my Google Home products to keep track of everything I want to accomplish.

Here are a few ways that your Google Assistant on Google Home devices can help with your wellness goals and put some spring in your step:

Get more sleep

Starting today, our Gentle Sleep & Wake feature lets you use any Google Home device to set a routine that gradually turns your Philips Hue smart lights on (wake) or off (sleep) over the course of 30 minutes, to mimic the sunrise or help you prepare for bed. This gradual change of light helps improve the quality of your sleep. Just say, “Hey Google,” then:

• “Turn on Gentle Wake up" to have your daily morning alarms pair with gradual brightening. Make sure to enable Gentle Wake Up on the same Google Home device you’ll  set your alarms on.
• "Wake up my lights." You can also say, “Hey Google, wake up my lights in the bedroom at 6:30 a.m.” This will start to gradually brighten your Philips Hue lights at the time that you set and can be set up to 24 hours in advance. 
  
• "Sleep my lights." You can also say, “Hey Google, sleep the lights in the living room.” This will gradually start to dim your Philips Hue lights and can be programmed up to 24 hours in advance. 

The Gentle Sleep & Wake feature is available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Singapore and India in English only. For other ways to wind down at the end of the day, you can also tune out noises from street traffic or construction next door by saying, “Hey Google, play white noise.”

Put your mind to bed

With Headspace on Google Home, you can try out a short meditation or a sleep exercise. Just say, "Hey Google, tell Headspace I'm ready for bed.” You can also say, “Hey Google, I want to meditate” to get recommendations like healing sounds, sleep sounds and more.

Cook healthy recipes

Cooking is easy with Google Home’s step-by-step recipes, and the convenience of a screen on Google Home Hub means that I can search for healthy family recipes and save them to “My Cookbook” for later. Use your voice to browse millions of recipes, get guided cooking instructions, set cooking timers and more.

Get some exercise

Use your Google Home to play your workout playlist, set alarms for working out or cast workout videos from YouTube to your TV with Google Home and Chromecast. If you’ve got a Google Home Hub, you can also watch workout videos right on the device. Try “Hey Google, show me barre workout videos” to get started.

Read more books

With Audiobooks on Google Play, you can buy an audiobook and listen to it on Google Home. Say, “Hey Google, read my book” to listen to your favorite audiobook hands-free with the Google Assistant. You can also use the Assistant on your phone to pick up where you left off. You can say, “Hey Google, stop playing in 20 minutes” to set a timer for bedtime reading each night, or multitask by listening to a book while tackling laundry or doing the dishes.

Hopefully your Google Home Hub, Mini or Max can help keep you healthy, happy and mindful for the remainder of 2019 and beyond.

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With the Roav Bolt, use your Google Assistant safely when driving

New research shows how Android helps companies build a digital workforce

IDC reports that by 2022, 75 percent of CIOs who don’t transition their organization to flexible IT product teams that use technology to solve problems in new ways will fall behind the competition. According to IDC, mobility is the key to building a connected workforce that’s agile, particularly when the organization is going through rapid change.  

In new research sponsored by Google, IDC asserts that teams can thrive with platforms that feature a diversity of hardware, offer strong security, and support IT management that balances with user experience. This series of whitepapers, videos and blog posts detail the critical role that mobility plays in achieving these core pillars and the strengths that Android offers as a strategic platform of choice for enterprise.

Phil Hochmuth, Program Director of IDC Mobility, said that for businesses to transform how their workers do their jobs with mobility, they must address key challenges around mobile computing risk, device capabilities, and form-factor selection, as well as the underlying provisioning and management of mobile end-user technology. IDC sees Android as a strategic platform that addresses each pillar to consider when choosing a mobile platform: Overall security, solution breath, and IT management capabilities balanced with user experience.

Android security extends from the hardware to the application stack, ensuring corporate data is kept secure. Our broad set of OEM partners offers a wide range of both price points as well as form factors that can enable every worker. And Android IT management capabilities span from the Work Profile, which separates personal data from corporate data access on a BYOD or personally enabled device, to locked down modes that control the device experience to a set of IT approved applications. Combined with innovative tools that bring machine learning, immersive experiences, and both native and web apps to users, Android is well suited to powering an organization’s digital transformation efforts.

Explore the IDC findings to discover how Android powers a mobile, connected workforce and can help your company take the next steps toward transitioning to a digital workforce.

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At Tech Day, hundreds of kids dive deep into STEM

Gathering insights in Google Analytics can be as easy as A-B-C

Today’s customers are deeply curious, searching high and low for information about a product before making a purchase. And this curiosity applies to purchases big and small—just consider the fact that mobile searches for “best earbuds” have grown by over 130 percent over the last two years. (Google Data, US, Oct 2015 - Sep 2016 vs. Oct 2017 - Sep 2018. ) To keep up with this curious customer, marketers are putting insights at the center of the strategy so that they can understand customers’ intentions and deliver a helpful, timely experience.

In our new guide about linking Google Analytics and Google Ads, we explore the broad range of reports available in Analytics. These reports give you crucial insights about the customer journey that can then be used to inform your campaigns in Google Ads. Here’s what you should know about the A-B-Cs of reporting.

Acquisition reports

How did your customers end up on your site in the first place? Acquisition reports answer this question, offering insights about how effectively your ads drive users to your site, which keywords and search queries are bringing new users to your site, and much more. This video gives you a quick overview of how Acquisition reports work.  

Behavior reports

How do you users engage with your site once they visit? Behavior reports give you valuable insights about how users respond to the content on your site. You can learn how each page is performing, what actions users are taking on your site, and much more about the site experience. Learn more about behavior reporting here.

Conversion reports

What path are users taking towards conversion? Conversion reporting in Analytics gathers valuable insights about those actions that are important to the success of your business—such as a purchase or completed sign-up for your email newsletter. Goal Flow reports help you see how a user engages as they move toward a conversion while Ecommerce reports are specifically designed to deliver insights for sites centered around purchases.

Reports open up a world of actionable insights that help you deeply understand and then quickly enhance a customer journey that is more complex than ever.

Missed the other posts in this series? Catch up now to read how creating effective campaigns for the modern customer journey can be achieved by bringing Google Analytics and Google Ads together.

And, download our new guide and learn how getting started with these reports is easy as A-B-C.

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Want to Change the Game? Design your own with Google Play

Calling all future game creators and designers! We’re looking for teens to share their game idea and vision for the future of gaming for a chance to see their game come to life on Google Play.

Today, we’re opening up our second annual Change the Game Design Challenge with Girls Make Games to inspire teens to consider a career in gaming—and celebrate women as players and creators. The Grand Prize Winner will win a $15,000 college scholarship and $15,000 for their school or community center’s technology program.

The top five finalists will serve as the creative directors for their game, teaming up with Girls Make Games and game industry veterans to develop and launch their game on Google Play. They’ll also receive an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles to showcase their game design and meet the mentors who will be helping to build their game. The finalists will join a celebration of women in gaming, get a VIP tour of Google Los Angeles, a scholarship to attend Girls Make Games Summer Camp and more.

The contest is open to U.S. residents only. For more information, including submission guidelines and how to enter, please visit g.co/ctgdesignchallenge. Looking for inspiration on what kind of game to create? Check out what last year’s finalists dreamed up.

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Suit up with Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame and Pixel

How we’re supporting economic opportunity in Iowa

For some, Iowa may call to mind images of rolling corn fields, or the Field of Dreams. But those in the know will tell you that the Hawkeye state has a storied history of technological innovation. The first electronic digital computer was created in a lab at Iowa State and Lee de Forest, the “Father of Radio,” was born and raised in Council Bluffs. Perhaps most impressively,  sliced bread is an Iowan invention, with the first single loaf bread-slicing machine patented here in 1928.

In 2009, Iowa also became home to a Google Data Center, where I—along with hundreds of Iowans—work to connect billions of people around the world to Google. When someone logs onto Gmail, watches a YouTube video or searches for an answer to some burning question, they might not think of Iowa, but they should.

With such a strong track record of fostering creative answers to difficult questions, Iowa is the perfect place for Google to kick off a statewide $1 million Google.org Impact Challenge, where we’re inviting local nonprofits to share their most ambitious ideas to create economic opportunity in their community. Then, a panel of local advisors will select the top five to receive a $175,000 grant to bring their ideas to life. Our advisors, listed below, represent all corners of the state:

• Dr. Dan Kinney, President, Iowa Western Community College
  
• Georgia Van Gundy, Executive Director and Board Secretary, Iowa Business Council
  
• Monica Chavez-Silva, Assistant Vice President for Community Enhancement, Grinnell College
  
• Sherry Ristau, President, Quad Cities Community Foundation
  
• Tej Dhawan, Chief Data Officer, Principal Financial Group
  

To cap off the competition, Google will invite Iowans to select one of the five projects they believe will have the greatest impact.

We kicked the Challenge off this morning in Des Moines at the first stop of a three-city Grow with Google Iowa Tour, where we’re teaming up with local libraries and partner organizations across the state to offer free trainings so that Iowans have the opportunity to learn digital skills to grow their careers or businesses. Tomorrow and the following day, we’ll visit libraries in Council Bluffs and Davenport as part of a larger commitment to support economic opportunity in America and bring in-person digital skills workshops to libraries to all 50 states.

Iowa nonprofit organizations can find more information on the Google.org Impact Challenge and submit their applications by visiting g.co/iowachallenge. The deadline for submissions is May 17th at 11:59 p.m. CT. We’re expecting to name the five winners in the fall of 2019. Considering the sliced bread precedent, the bar is being set pretty high.

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See Brighter in the Dark with Pixel at Coachella

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USMCA: A trade framework for the digital age

When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1992, the global economy and the world looked a lot different than they do today. There was no such thing as a web search engine. Most people didn't know what email was (let alone use it). And to participate in international trade, a business needed big financial resources, offices and staff around the world, and lots of fax machines.

Thanks to the internet, that's all changed. Today, even the smallest of businesses can be global players and have customers in every corner of the world. Using the internet and online tools, the family-run Missouri Star Quilt Company has built an international business by sharing quilting how-to videos on YouTube, and the social impact brand Sword & Plough has sold thousands of bags and accessories globally that support veteran jobs.

The web has fundamentally changed not only how we trade, but also who trades. Small businesses using online tools are five times more likely to export than their offline counterparts. U.S. manufacturers are now the leading exporters of products and services online.

That’s why we need trade agreements that reflect the reality of today's economy. NAFTA references “telegrams” multiple times, but doesn’t even mention the internet. In contrast, the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) includes a comprehensive set of digital trade provisions that keep the internet open, and protect the businesses and consumers that rely on it:

• Trusted infrastructure: USMCA promotes an open and secure global technical infrastructure that supports a new kind of trade. For example, the agreement prohibits the U.S., Mexico and Canada from requiring that data be stored and replicated locally, reducing the cost of doing business in other countries and ensuring that data isn’t vulnerable to attack.
  

• Innovation-enabling rules: USMCA promotes the open online framework that’s been key to the success of the U.S. internet economy. This framework both allows for platform-based trade, and also empowers internet platforms to combat harmful content online and fight piracy.
  

• Protecting data: Consumers’ privacy should be protected no matter what country an individual or business is located in, and USMCA reflects this important principle. The agreement promotes strong privacy laws and cybersecurity standards to protect people’s data.
  

• Access to information: USMCA limits government restrictions on information flow across borders, recognizing that wide availability of information leads to more trade and economic growth. The agreement also encourages governments to release non-sensitive data in an open and machine-readable format, so companies of all sizes have the opportunity to build commercial applications and services with public information.
  

• Modernizing trade: Finally, USMCA prohibits our trading partners from imposing customs duties on things like e-books, videos, music, software, games and apps—ensuring consumers can continue to enjoy free or low-cost digital products.
  

USMCA will establish a strong framework to promote the new digital economy, and will unlock new sources of opportunity, creativity and job growth in North America. We look forward to seeing the agreement approved and implemented in a way that allows everyone to benefit from a free and open internet.

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How we search for bow wows and meows

The ultimate account security is now in your pocket

Exploring new possibilities in cloud-based education technology

Taking the initiative with data journalism

With Goodwill, we're helping more Americans learn digital skills

Finding "A Space for Being" at Salone del Mobile in Milan

Grow with Google comes to NYC

I was raised by a single mom who worked multiple jobs, and despite being generally exhausted, she stressed the importance of hard work and perseverance. Following her example, as a kid not only did I work hard in school, I dove into after-school activities. From there, I received a full scholarship to a prestigious secondary school, and went on to a career here at Google. Today, my passion for creating opportunities for others is rooted in the opportunities afforded to me. That’s why I'm proud to be involved with Grow with Google, our program to help individuals and small businesses gain the skills that can set them up for success, today and in the future.

From Albuquerque to Bozeman to Cleveland, Grow with Google has criss-crossed America, supporting diverse people looking to use digital skills to find jobs, advance their careers and grow their businesses. Today, we’re bringing the tour to New York City for five months with the opening of the Grow with Google NYC Learning Center—right on the ground floor of our Chelsea office, in the heart of Manhattan.

Open to everyone, the Grow with Google NYC Learning Center will offer free hands-on workshops in partnership with community organizations, one-on-one coaching and community events. The 11,000 square foot space will have three classrooms, offering multiple classes per day and will be open six days a week.

Learning Center classes will cover a range of topics all focused on digital skills. So whether you're a business owner who wants to reach new customers, an educator interested in bringing digital tools into your classroom, or looking to learn new skills to grow your career—there’s a class for you. Several hours a week, we'll have Googler experts on hand to answer specific questions through one-to-one coaching. We’re also partnering with other local community organizations dedicated to digital skills building and training, including Goodwill, Per Scholas, Hudson Guild and many others.

We're proud to set up the Learning Center in New York City, home to our largest office outside of California. We started in the city nearly 20 years ago with a few Googlers working out of a Starbucks on 86th Street; today, we’re home to over 7,000 employees across three buildings. Recently, we announced that we’ll invest over $1 billion to establish a new campus here, Google Hudson Square. As we plan to grow our own presence in New York, it’s our responsibility to support the neighborhoods and communities we call home.

Since 2011, Google has contributed more than $150 million in grants and employee-matched giving to New York nonprofit institutions. We’ve 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. To help create economic opportunities citywide, 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. And just last month, we opened a new lab for CodeNext for Black and Latinx high school students to learn coding and gain the skills and inspiration they need for long and rewarding careers in computer science-related fields.

The Grow with Google NYC Learning Center is the next chapter in our commitment to helping create economic opportunity and, in doing so, strengthening our ties to our neighborhood and the five boroughs. To learn more and sign up for free classes at the Learning Center, visit g.co/GrowNYC. My hope is that New Yorkers will be able to access opportunities here like the ones I was lucky to have growing up.

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5 steps to improve media performance using Google Analytics

This is the second post in a series about how linking Google Analytics and Google Ads can help marketers gain deeper insights, create smarter campaigns, and drive better business outcomes.

Today’s customers expect the right message at the right time—even as their journeys become more fast-paced and less linear. How are marketers responding? With ad experiences that aim to be assistive and personalized. To create these experiences, marketers are turning to integrated analytics and ads.

In our new guide about linking Google Analytics and Google Ads, we highlight some of the actionable steps you and your team can take to deliver the right ad at the right time.

Step 1: Link your accounts

Linking Google Analytics and Google Ads puts insight-gathering and ad creation side by side—so that you can easily create campaigns that are informed by detailed site metrics and conversion data. And linking your accounts only requires a few easy steps. Here’s how to get started.

Step 2: Activate Cross Device capabilities

Cross Device capabilities in Analytics help you understand how your customers are behaving across their different devices so that you can optimize your strategy. For instance, you might find that, based on cross device insights, you want to increase your mobile ad spend to drive more conversions. Activating Google signals makes Cross Device capabilities available to you.

Step 3: Create an Analytics audience and share with Google Ads

When you create an audience in Analytics then share it with Google Ads, you’re able to create ad campaigns that are specifically tailored to specific segments of your audience. For instance, you can create an audience of all of your returning customers, then create a Google Ads campaign specifically for this audience. Here's how you get started sharing audiences in Google Ads.

Step 4: Create and import Goals

Goals in Google Analytics can represent any site metric you find important—such as time spent on your site, a specific action taken on your site, or a conversion. Importing these Goals into Google Ads enables you to access valuable conversion insights and site engagement metrics right in Google Ads. Here’s how  to create Goals in Analytics and then import them into Google Ads.   

Step 5: Generate and view reports

When you link Google Analytics and Google Ads, you gain access to a variety of reports about your Google Ads campaigns right in your Analytics account — giving you important campaign performance insights that can be used to improve your marketing strategy. Learn more about Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion reports.

Read our new guide to read about how bringing Google Analytics and Google Ads together can bring your media performance to the next level.

In case you missed how integrating Google Analytics and Google Ads can be a marketer's solution to delivering experiences that meet consumers’ rising expectations, check out our post Google Analytics and Google Ads: A Powerful Pairing. Next up, we'll cover how you can easily gather the insights you need to better understand the customer journey with Google Analytics.

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The cloud demystified: How it works and why it matters

How advanced is your organization’s data strategy?

For news and media organizations, audience is king. But how they use insights to adjust their editorial and revenue strategies varies widely across the industry. Deloitte, in partnership with the Google News Initiative, conducted a global study to help publishers responsibly analyze and activate their data to improve user engagement, increase direct-paying relationships with readers, and drive revenue from advertising.

During the study, Deloitte interviewed 80 executives from 50 leading news and media companies in 16 countries, from print to digital. Along the way, Deloitte uncovered stark contrasts in these organizations' level of data maturity. While three-quarters of publishers acknowledge the value of data-driven decision making, less than half are able to use their data effectively.

The most successful news and media companies use audience data to drive innovation across editorial products and revenue strategies, but many still struggle to prioritize data investment over other competing business needs. In its report, "Digital transformation through data: how news and media companies to drive value with data," Deloitte placed each organization into one of four categories.

Deloitte’s data maturity scale:

• Nascent: For these media companies, the data journey has barely begun. While they've been collecting basic information such as page views for some time, digital initiatives are not a priority for top management, and they have so far failed to make adequate investments in essential tools and technologies.
• Developing: These news organizations have garnered some success from utilizing data but still struggle to implement new tools and processes into their workflows.
• Mature: Data-driven decisions are second nature to mature media companies across much of their operations, but there are still instances where data takes a back seat to gut instinct and old ways of doing business.
• Leading: These media organizations see data as the key to their future success and have adopted a culture of continuous experimentation and innovation. Increasingly, these organizations think of themselves as technology companies that generate news products.

Where does your media organization fall on the maturity scale?

The first step on your journey to becoming a data-informed organization is to understand where you are, as well as where you need to be. Our interactive Data Maturity Benchmarking Tool can help you figure it out. After taking your self assessment, download the data activation guide to see what steps you can take to improve your data maturity. This guide outlines the top nine publisher use cases for data to drive user engagement and monetization.  In it, you’ll also find the four key organizational foundations you'll need to execute any of the use cases.

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A library’s next chapter: digital skills with help from Google

New types of answers from your Google Assistant on Android

An ultramarathoner running so others can “rise”

Kansas City is buzzing: explore it with Google Arts & Culture

Take a walk through Kakadu on Google Street View

Cloud Covered: What was new with Google Cloud in March

March came in with a roar here at Google Cloud, with the start of the NCAA’s annual college basketball tournament and an exciting Pi Day. We’re looking forward to cloud’s annual conference next week: Google Cloud Next, where thousands of attendees will come to San Francisco to discuss all things cloud, learn new skills, and network with peers. Read on for more of what was new last month in Google Cloud.

Try a slice of 𝛑, made fresh in the cloud.
Every year on March 14, mathematicians (and those of us who love pie) celebrate Pi Day, marking the first three digits of 𝛑, or 3.14, the number that goes on forever. This might sound familiar from elementary school math classes, but calculating pi digits is still alive and well. One Google Cloud developer, Emma Haruka Iwao, fulfilled her longtime dream on March 14, 2019 and calculated 31.4 trillion digits of pi, earning a Guinness World Record in the process. It was also the first time the world record was broken using cloud computing, which allowed the complex calculations to run continuously and reliably over several months. Using the power of Google Cloud to calculate pi also means the results are now publicly accessible to developers worldwide (unlike in pre-cloud days, when results had to be shipped on physical hard drives). You can explore more here. And at the Google Cloud Next conference, Emma will give a technical deep-dive on the details of how the record was broken.

Cloud shoots, and scores, with NCAA historical data.
Wrangling huge amounts of data is at the heart of what Google Cloud Platform (GCP) does. So our ongoing NCAA partnership makes a lot of sense considering their collected 80-plus years worth of basketball data. Last year, we made real-time predictions and insights during the games using GCP to analyze data, and this year we’ll invite student developers to join in. For this year’s tournament, we added new online classes to help developers explore NCAA data using our data analysis and machine learning tools.

Google Cloud powers gamers around the world.
At this year's Game Developers Conference, Google Cloud unveiled how it is helping power some of the world's largest AAA games, including Apex Legends and Tom Clancy's The Division 2. Our global infrastructure helps ensure that players across the world connect and enjoy low-latency online game experiences together.

Climb every region, till you find your cloud.
Our newest GCP region opened last month in Zurich, Switzerland—there are now six GCP regions in Europe and 19 in total. A region is a Google Cloud geographic location where customers can store data and run applications using GCP. Having a region nearby with three zones means businesses gain faster access to data and higher availability.

Make your cloud knowledge official at Next ‘19.
The rate of change in technology is accelerating, and this is especially true of cloud technology. As a result, training has become essential to keep IT teams abreast of the latest technologies so they can build products for users. As cloud grows in popularity and complexity, cloud certifications have emerged, including GCP certifications, as a benchmark to identify skilled cloud architects, data engineers, cloud developers, security engineers and more. This year’s Google Cloud Next conference will offer six certification exam options.

That’s a wrap for this month. Keep up-to-date on Google Cloud news on the blog.

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Working together when we’re not together

Master your email with these essential Gmail tips

Your email can feel like a never-ending to-do list. And in a world where technology makes you more connected to work than ever before, how do you set ground rules to keep your energy up, your focus sharp and your sanity intact? As a productivity expert at Google, I help Googlers use products like Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar to get more done during their busy days. Email in particular can be a source of stress, but it doesn’t have to be. 

Gmail had its birthday earlier this week, and for 15 years, it’s been a helpful sidekick for billions of people around the globe. Part of my job is sharing Gmail-related tips with fellow Googlers—here are my top 10 email management tips for you:

1. Cut down on notifications: Don’t bother your brain with notifications for every new email—proactively check your email instead. On your phone, you can set up notifications for certain emails—say, the ones from your boss. This will help you identify important emails and disconnect when you want to.
2. Respond within 24 hours, even if it’s only to check in:You probably can’t get to all emails within 24 hours, but you can avoid getting another follow up email from a coworker. Giving a status update—“Hi, I got this email but not going to get to it until later this week!”—is a great way to set expectations and show them you’re on it.
3. Close out your email 1-2 times a day: Email is necessary to get your job done, but it’s also the ultimate distraction. Most people leave it open all day and check it every 30 minutes (if not more). Try closing your email tab when you have time to do deep work: the ability to focus without distraction on a demanding task.
4. Don’t click on an email more than twice: If you read an email then mark it as unread, you’ll have to read it again to remember what to do with it. Read it once to scan and tag your future action (for example, labeling it as “must respond,” or “to do this week,”) then one more time when you answer it.
5. Sorting, reading and answering emails should be separate activities:Most people bounce between sorting one email for later, reading one, answering one and repeating. We lose so much energy switching between these activities. Instead, tell yourself “right now I’m sorting everything.” Then when you’re done, read everything you need to read.
6. Keep emails that require clear action—otherwise archive or delete:When your inbox contains emails without clear action items, it gives your brain the false sense of having too much to do. Be ruthless about deleting, archiving, or snoozing emails that don’t require an immediate action from you in some way.
7. Skip some emails: Every email you see takes a tiny piece of your energy, so each item in your inbox should be something you need to look at. Gmail lets you create filters so that certain emails “skip your inbox” and won’t appear as new emails. For example, if you get a lot of email newsletters, set up a filter with “Has the words:unsubscribe”—now, those emails won’t distract you, but you can search for them later.
8. Don’t mix your read and unread emails:Combining read and unread emails in your inbox is a recipe for anxiety. New emails should come into one section and emails that you’ve already read and require an action should be in a different section. You can create a Multiple Inbox pane or “move” emails to different label that denotes a specific action (such as “To Do” or “Follow Up”).
9. To stay focused, keep new email out of sight. It can be hard to answer pressing emails when  you’re constantly tempted to open the bright and shiny new emails that just came in. Open up a section like your “Snoozed emails” (emails that you’ve saved for later) or your “Starred emails” (your high-priority emails) so you can stay focused on those tasks, instead of getting distracted by new email.
10. To find what you need, just search: Email labels can help you stay organized, but think about how Google got its start … Search! Searching your email—instead of digging through labels—is actually a faster way to find the email you’re looking for. You can search by date, sender, subject (and more) and you can get even more specific with queries like “has:attachment” or “older_than:6m” (m=months).

Go forth, and tackle your email.  

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Hey Google, talk like a Legend

Imagine hearing the silky smooth voice of John Legend answering your pressing questions everyday. Or narrating your local weather forecast. Or singing you happy birthday. Well, that dream can now be a reality.

Starting today, John Legend’s voice is available as a cameo on the Google Assistant, available in English for a limited time in the U.S.

Want to experience it yourself? Just say, “Hey Google, talk like a Legend," and you’ll hear John’s voice for select content when you ask the Assistant for jokes or for answers to questions like “What’s the temperature outside?” or “Why is the sky blue?” You’ll also hear John’s voice when you ask about his personality and affinity for music. Give it a go by saying, “Hey Google…”

• "Are you John Legend?"
• “What’s your favorite type of music?”
• “Who is Chrissy Teigen?”
• “Tell me a joke.”

All other responses will continue to be in one of the regular Assistant voices. You can also go to your “Assistant voice” in Assistant Settings to switch to John’s melodic voice. After you make the change, listen up—you may hear some fun surprises along the way. (Here’s a couple to get you started...just say “Hey Google, serenade me” or “Hey Google, are we just ordinary people?”)

John’s voice is available as a cameo on all devices that have the Google Assistant, including Google Home speakers and Smart Displays, and on mobile for Android and iOS.

Cameo voices on the Assistant have been one of the top requests we’ve heard from you, and with the help of state-of-the-art speech synthesis model, WaveNet, they’re now a reality. We hope you enjoy hearing John’s voice as the Google Assistant as much as he enjoyed his time in the recording studio.

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Google Analytics and Google Ads: A Powerful Pairing

Today’s customer journey doesn’t follow a standard path—it’s diverse, non-linear, and always evolving. Consumers conduct research about products across a variety of devices—and marketers are looking for ways to deliver experiences that meet consumers’ rising expectations. For many marketers, the solution lies in gaining a deeper understanding of the customer journey. The integration between Google Analytics and Google Ads helps you accomplish this.

Once linked together, Google Analytics and Google Ads form a powerful partnership—and our new guide explores the ways this integrated solution can help you unlock deeper insights, create smarter marketing, and drive better business outcomes.

Insights-driven marketing

Linking Google Analytics and Google Ads put your insights and ad creation side by side, helping you better understand how effectively your ads are leading to conversions. You can then adjust ad creative based on these insights, delivering informed marketing that leads to more conversions.

Optimized bidding

Once you link Google Analytics and Google Ads, you can access a new set of reports about your Google Ads campaigns right in your Analytics account, helping you better understand what happens after a customer clicks an ad. For instance, you might find that certain keywords are leading to more conversions—and now you can focus your bidding on those high-performing keywords.

Customized messaging

When Google Analytics and Google Ads are working together, you can share Analytics audiences with Google Ads to deliver messaging tailored to different groups of customers. For instance, you can make an audience of users who filled a cart on your website but abandoned their cart before completing a purchase. You can then create a campaign in Google Ads and focus it on these cart abandoners—driving more conversions in the process.

Advanced machine learning

Machine learning-powered capabilities in Analytics answer important questions about your audience. For instance, you can ask Analytics questions in plain language such as “How much time on average are mobile users spending on my site’s homepage?” and get an answer back quickly. You can also use machine learning to find a list of your most valuable customers with Smart Lists—then dynamically adjust your Google Ads campaigns to reach these customers.

Read more about this powerful integration between Google Analytics and Google Ads in our guide. And check back next week when we'll post 5 steps to improve media performance.

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Free digital skills programs make learning a lifelong journey

Janitor, seamstress, housekeeper, gardener: These were some of the jobs my parents held after we immigrated to the United States. Growing up in a lower-income neighborhood, I never knew anyone who worked with computers professionally. That changed when my brother signed up for a computer course, providing him the digital skills that would lead to a four-year university and ultimately a career as an engineer.

These days, whether someone is a janitor or a housekeeper or an engineer, they can benefit from—and deserve access to—basic digital skills. In today’s job market, it is critical to know how to navigate job search websites, write a resume, craft a professional email, develop a budget, and so much more.

That’s why, as part of our Grow with Google initiative to drive economic opportunity for all, Google’s Applied Digital Skills is partnering with the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) to train educators in all 50 states on essential digital skills for the evolving workforce. In the two years since launching Applied Digital Skills, a core part of the Grow with Google program, over a half-million students, including many adult learners, have used the curriculum to help them achieve their personal and professional goals.

Tamara Rood-Spenker, an adult education instructor who teaches down the road from our Google office in Mountain View, California, told me recently that Applied Digital Skills lessons expose her students to new job skills, like using formulas to analyze data in spreadsheets, showing them how technology can make many tasks simpler in their day-to-day lives.

Educators will now be better positioned to help adult learners prepare for and find jobs, build their businesses and even work toward earning their high school equivalency credentials. COABE represents over 55,000 adult educators in the United States who support underserved adults to master the skills they need to build their careers.

Together with COABE, Google will hold 200 hours of in-person professional development sessions for adult educators. We will also build new support guides and training materials, hold webinars and feature best practices in digital skills training. And we will also provide new, free Applied Digital Skills lessons on digital skills that adult educators can utilize in their classrooms.

I know firsthand that learning never ends. As an immigrant to the United States from a working class family, a former community college instructor, and now a Googler leading outreach for computer science and digital skills training, I know education is an ongoing process. We’re excited to be a part of that process with the teachers who make learning a reality, organizations like COABE who support educators and the Americans who wake up every day ready to take their next step.

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Hitting send on the next 15 years of Gmail