Pick up the pace with three fitness apps, powered by Google Maps

Improve efficiency and collaboration with G Suite for Nonprofits

Time is important. As a nonprofit, every minute that your staff spends searching for emails or coordinating meetings is time away from making a difference for the communities or causes they serve. G Suite for Nonprofits is designed to help nonprofits work faster, smarter, and more collaboratively across different locations, at no charge. Here are a few ways G Suite for Nonprofits can help your team be more productive.

Present your nonprofit professionally

With Gmail, you can create an unlimited number of personalized email addresses for your team (like joe@yournonprofit.org). Your staff will be able to communicate with volunteers, supporters and the community with professional emails coming from your nonprofit's custom domain, resulting in brand awareness and increased trust in your communications.

Make your next grant proposal pop

A successful grant proposal needs inspiring, structured, and concise content to stand out when competing against hundreds. Often you don’t have much time, you’re on a shoestring budget, and your co-workers are in different time zones. G Suite provides templates and suggested layouts to give your documents and slides a professional look, so that you can focus on content rather than design. Grammar suggestions in Docs make you a more confident writer, especially handy if you are working against a tight deadline. Real-time collaboration lets each member of your team contribute to the same file from anywhere.  And with all of these tools, your team will become even more productive and collaborative.

Manage your volunteers

There are lots of ways G Suite can  help you engage with your volunteers more efficiently. When you create a Site, you can include a page to provide some background on your nonprofit and share volunteers success stories, add sections for onboarding and training materials, and post upcoming volunteer opportunities with an embedded Calendar. You can also embed a Form for volunteers to sign-up. The information they submit is automatically and safely stored in Sheets so you won’t misplace paper sign-up forms anymore. For reliable communications and updates, create a Group with all your volunteer emails. You can send an email to everyone in the group with one address, invite the group to an event, or share documents.

Coordinate your nonprofit board

Nonprofit boards are at the core of your strategy and coordinating them can be tricky, especially when members are spread across in many locations. With G Suite, you have the tools you need to coordinate with your board effectively. You can schedule board meetings on Calendar, and directly add members to the event. With Hangouts Meet, those who can’t participate in person will be able to join in a video call or dial in from their phone.

Control your data securely

Privacy and security are critical to nonprofits, especially when managing personal information that may be sensitive. G Suite is built on stringent privacy and security standards and allows you to add users easily, manage devices, and configure security and settings so that your data stays safe. This is essential, especially if your nonprofit has high turnover of staff or volunteers.

G Suite for Nonprofits has helped many nonprofits to become more efficient and spend more time serving the community. Find out more about how G Suite for Nonprofits can help you.

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Demo Day Asia 2019: the countdown to Bangkok begins

Update on Project Strobe: New policies for Chrome and Drive

Third-party apps and websites create services that millions of people use to get things done and customize their online experience. To make this ecosystem successful, people need to be confident their data is secure, and developers need clear rules of the road. That’s why last year we announced Project Strobe, a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to your Google account and Android device data.

As a result of our review, we implemented new policies across Gmail and Android to better protect your data. For example, with changes to SMS and Call Log permissions for Android apps, the number of apps with access to this sensitive information has decreased by more than 98 percent. These apps are still able to deliver core services to people just by switching to permissions that access less sensitive data, or by eliminating minor functionality in their apps.

Today, we’re announcing additional changes as a result of Project Strobe, including new policies for Chrome extensions and the Drive API. Here’s what’s new:

Trustworthy Chrome Extensions

There are more than 180,000 extensions in the Chrome Web Store, and nearly half of all Chrome desktop users actively use extensions to customize Chrome and their experience on the web—helping them keep track of to-dos or find shopping deals online. This ability to improve and personalize online experiences depends on a vibrant community of Chrome browser developers.

Last October, we shared our intention to ensure that all Chrome extensions are trustworthy by default. Today, as part of Project Strobe, we’re continuing that effort with additional Chrome Web Store policies. Specifically:

1. We’re requiring extensions to only request access to the appropriate data needed to implement their features. If there is more than one permission that could be used to implement a feature, developers must use the permission with access to the least amount of data. While this has always been encouraged of developers, now we’re making this a requirement for all extensions.

2. We’re requiring more extensions to post privacy policies, including extensions that handle personal communications and user-provided content.Our policies have previously required any extension that handles personal and sensitive user data to post a privacy policy and handle that data securely. Now, we’re expanding this category to include extensions that handle user-provided content and personal communications. Of course, extensions must continue to be transparent in how they handle user data, disclosing the collection, use and sharing of that data.

We’re announcing these changes in advance of the official policy rollout this summer to give developers the time needed to ensure their extensions will be in compliance. Developers can learn more about these changes in our FAQ.

Tightening the Drive API

Last fall we updated our user data policy to provide additional guidelines and restrictions for apps seeking to access your Gmail data. Today we’re announcing plans to extend the same policy to Google Drive, which will give you more control over what data third-party apps can access in Drive.

When you connect third-party apps, Drive gives you one central place to keep all your files and helps you easily collaborate with others. With this updated policy, we’ll limit apps that use Google Drive APIs from broadly accessing content or data in Drive. This means we’ll restrict third-party access to specific files and be verifying public apps that require broader access, such as backup services.

These changes will go into effect early next year. Visit the Cloud blog for more details.

Our top priority is to protect user data and keep it safe, while continuing to enable developers to build features that people want and need. As we continue the work of Project Strobe, we’ll also work with our developer partners to give them appropriate time to adjust and update their apps and services.

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Google Maps adds dish-covery to the menu

Banks find that investing in Android pays off

Banks around the world have been turning to Android to help them with a mobile-first approach for their organizations, backed by multi-layered security and privacy protections. Many banks and financial institutions are now deploying or trialling Android Enterprise solutions, which provide choice via a range of fully-managed devices as well as enabling BYOD programs.

Enhancing productivity with flexible, personal solutions

With Android, financial teams can adopt efficient working environments, both internally and externally as they work to deliver enhanced customer experiences. Ben Groeneveld, Director of Enterprise Mobility, Chat and Collaboration at the Standard Chartered Bank, explains how Android has helped employees work more productively by securely accessing corporate information on their mobile devices: “Android has enabled us to scale our mobility strategy so that employees can use their own devices knowing their privacy is protected, thanks to the Android work profile. We're able to rely on platform-level native security that meets regulatory obligations, and our colleagues can work more flexibly, knowing that their personal apps and data have been kept separate and private.”

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) is the third largest building society (similar to a credit union) in the U.K., and has created a flexible work environment for employees with Android. YBS initially deployed Android-powered kiosk devices to the larger retail branches and customer-facing mortgage brokers, but expanded its deployment to a set of standardized handsets that extended services beyond email and calendar to intranet access and third-party corporate applications. Andrew Ellison, YBS IT Desktop End User Computing Delivery Manager, says a secure and stable digital environment was critical, with Android Enterprise providing the perfect mix of device management and delivering secure corporate applications and services to teams while giving them a personal experience: “The robust, secure, and flexible management offered by Android was a key differentiator, as it means we’ve been able to give people the tools to work more flexibly, helping us achieve efficiencies with a flexible working policy.”

Delivering on industry security requirements

Android’s multi-layered security protections, validated by Gartner, gives banks the information they need to deploy Android across their organization. CaixaBank, the number one retail bank in Spain, has deployed over 22,000 Android devices to its employees as part of its plan to put technology at the service of employees and customers. According to Pere Nebot, Chief Information Officer at the bank, “Android helps our employees offer the best customer experience while complying with the highest security requirements established in the banking industry. The deployment is adding additional productivity capabilities and functionalities to our workforce, allowing our employees to offer a full range of services from any location.”

Companies in tightly-regulated sectors like banking set an incredibly high bar for any technology solution or platform they deploy. With the Android Enterprise Recommended program, banks can select devices that meet these elevated enterprise requirements. For HSBC, the program provides a guide for its mobility strategy. John Burton, Head of Product Management for Client Services, says, “We’re only going to consider supporting Android Enterprise Recommended devices within our ecosystem. For us, that means we can set a baseline for the manageability of the device, the way it's enrolled, level of security patching it gets and the consistency of the device.”

Android offers layered security defenses and a breadth of device solutions that meet the rigorous needs of financial service institutions. Employee-friendly options like the work profile and the device curation of Android Enterprise Recommended ease the burden on IT departments when it comes to management and device testing.

For guidance on getting started with Android, discover how the Android Enterprise Recommended program can help your organization find the right devices and services, validated for the elevated needs of enterprise use.

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Google Marketing Platform Partners now available globally

Last year we announced Google Marketing Platform Partners, a new program designed to ensure you have access to the resources you need to do more effective marketing and grow your business with Google Marketing Platform. Whether you want to build out in-house skills or engage a service provider, we’ve developed a robust partner program that allows you to confidently find the expertise you need.

Starting today, Google Marketing Platform Partners is accepting applications globally. We have nearly 600 partners, and are accepting applications for new partners in most major markets around the world. If you’re a prospective partner, you can review the process and policies for product certifications and submit an application.

Trusted sources

From single projects to long-term partnerships, Google Marketing Platform Partners helps you find the right people with the right expertise to meet your business needs. Leading interactive agencies, system integrators, and top technology, data and media companies are available to support multiple areas of your business. And each partner is rigorously vetted by Google with a comprehensive certification process.

The partner program includes:

• Certified Individuals who make up a broad global talent pool of advanced Google Marketing Platform practitioners who have successfully demonstrated expertise through successful completion of product exams.
  

• Certified Companies that provide consulting, training, implementation, operations and technical support services for Google Marketing Platform. These companies not only have individuals certified in one or more products, but they have a high level of knowledge, practical and industry experience, as well as stellar customer references.
  

• Sales Partners that are Google Marketing Platform experts in addition to being Certified Companies. They partner closely with Google to provide consulting and support services, in addition to selling the technology on our behalf.

Google Marketing Platform Partner certifications assess practitioner and corporate competency with regard to campaign setup, strategy, measurement, optimization, and troubleshooting for the following products: Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Google Analytics, Campaign Manager, and Google Web Designer. Additionally, certifications for Data Studio, Tag Manager, and Optimize are offered to companies that have become certified on at least one of the core product certifications listed above.

Teaming up

Think of Google Marketing Platform Partners as a way to develop your extended marketing team, backed by Google. To get started, search for partners in your area that match your business needs.

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New Data Studio developer tools make building connectors and viz easier

Data Studio, Google’s data visualization platform, includes a developer features that expand the flexibility and functionality of your dashboards. Using Data Studio community connectors and community visualizations, you can connect to any internet-connected data source, and create custom visualizations tailored to your data and storytelling needs.

Recently, we created the Data Studio Community Component generator (dscc-gen), a command-line tool that streamlines building community connectors and community visualizations. dscc-gen provides working templates and opinionated workflows that make it quick and easy to create and deploy your projects.

Community Connectors tooling

Typically, developing a community connector means using the online Apps Scripts environment. The online editor is an excellent tool that can be used for all online tasks, but it doesn't support automating repetitive (and error-prone) tasks. By using a project generated from dscc-gen, updating a deployment becomes as easy as running npm run update_production and trying out your latest changes is just npm run open_latest.

To create a new community connector with dscc-gen, just run this command:

npx @google/dscc-gen connector

After the command finishes, you will have a working connector with a production deployment and best-practice deployment scripts. If you have an existing connector, you can still use dscc-gen to get the best-practice deployment scripts. See existing connectors for details.

For more information on commands that are available, see the local development developer documentation.  

Community Visualization tooling

Typically, developing a community visualization means editing local files, re-uploading the changes, and reloading a Data Studio report. This template provides a local development cycle and scripts that make bundling and deploying your code a breeze. By using a project generated by dscc-gen, deploying a visualization with caching enabled becomes as easy as running npm run build:prod && npm run push:prod.

To create a new community visualization with dscc-gen, just run this command:

npx @google/dscc-gen viz

After the command finishes, you will have a working visualization with a lightning-fast local workflow and best-practice build/deployment scripts.

For a rundown of how to best use this tool, visit the local development developer documentation.

Templates and use casesOur tooling supports the most common use-cases for connectors and visualizations. We’ve open sourced the library and code on GitHub, where you can make and request improvements.

Looking forward

We’re continually adding features to our developer platform. Community visualizations just added support for filter interactions, and connectors added many improvements throughout 2018. Sign up for updates on our the Data Studio developer ecosystem.

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Enhance your digital strategy: Women of Publishing Leadership Series

This summer, we’re excited to introduce the Women of Publishing Leadership Series, brought to you by the Google Partnerships team. This masterclass is an opportunity to enhance your business’ digital strategy through an exclusive, four-part webinar series.

A strong digital presence is necessary for driving growth in your business. But focusing on the success of women-led businesses is even more critical, as women only generate 37% of GDP, while making up half of the world’s working age population. Substantial strides have been made in growing the ranks of women in leadership and ownership and women are rising fast in the income and managerial ranks, at a rate that’s 1.5x the national average.

What you can expect

The Women of Publishing Leadership Series was created to help women leaders develop their skills in digital strategy to propel their business in the digital economy. The content is designed for small and medium-sized digital businesses (<500 employees) that are women-led, display strong female leadership or have a predominantly-female audience.

Participants will have access to a tailored program focused on improving their digital presence, through a comprehensive monetization and data utilization curriculum. Women from all types of digital backgrounds: apps, news, entertainment, video, ecommerce, etc. are encouraged to attend.Sign up now.

Webinar sessions

Planning for Growth (add to calendar)

• Date and time: Wednesday, June 19 at 1:30 PM ET 

• Speaker: Sarah Carpenter, Manager of Scalable Acquisitions, Google 

• Summary: Setting the stage for the webinar series, this session will help you learn how to get into the growth mindset and why it matters for your business.

Content and Audience Strategy (add to calendar)

• Date and time: Wednesday, July 17 at 1:30 PM ET

• Speaker: Amy Harding, Director of Analytics, Revenue Optimization, and Google News Consumer Insights

• Summary: Learn how to better understand and engage your audience with a robust digital content strategy.

Using Data to Drive Growth (add to calendar)

• Date and time: Wednesday, July 31 at 1:30 PM ET

• Speaker: Madhav Goyal, Publisher Intelligence Analyst

• Summary: Many acknowledge the value of data-driven decision making - but few are able to use their data effectively. Get actionable insights on how to leverage data to drive growth for your business.

Monetization Tips and Tricks (add to calendar)

• Date and time: Wednesday, August 14 at 1:30 PM ET

• Speaker: Roshni Dutt, Platforms Monetization Lead, Google

• Summary: Gain pro-tips on recognizing the value of your audience and effectively monetizing your content.

If you’re ready to take your small or medium-sized businesses to the next level, sign up by Monday, June 17th, and gain access to all of the sessions by registering here.

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Introducing Data Studio Community Visualizations as Chart Interaction Filters

A challenge to stimulate local news in North America

When journalist Megan Lucero started as director at U.K. based Bureau Local, she had an ambitious mission: to use technology to discover powerful public interest stories in local news.

The startup, which is part of the nonprofit organization The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,received financial support from Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund to create a platform where data journalists could come together and work on stories collaboratively. With this funding they set about a huge effort to stimulate the local news scene.

More than two years later, Bureau Local has not only attracted hundreds of journalists, activists and interested citizens eager to work on local data journalism, but also has produced a number of agenda-changing front pages for local newspapers and websites throughout the United Kingdom. These have included an investigation into the number of deaths of homeless people, another into provision for domestic violence victims and a focus on town hall sell-offs of public spaces. Megan and her team have also received a string of journalism awards, including a prestigious European Press Prize (EPP), and just last week received nominations in three categories of the GEN Data Journalism Awards.

Initiatives like Bureau Local, along with other important work in the local news space, are the reason we’re expanding our effort to launch the first GNI Innovation Challenge in North America, and it’s all about local news.

We heard loud and clear from journalists across the United States and Canada that there is a significant need to empower news organizations and reporters who are covering their local communities because they are are under increasing financial pressure. Local journalists are the beating hearts of their communities, whether they’re reporting from the front row of a city council hearing, helping citizens understand infrastructure changes in their neighborhoods or providing a live play-by-play of a high school basketball game.

This announcement builds on last year’s launch of the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenges, program aimed at stimulating the news ecosystem around the world in response to the industry’s most urgent needs. The program kicked off in the Asia Pacific region, where 23 recipients from 14 countries across the region were awarded funding for the exciting new ideas they proposed to address challenges with reader revenue.

How it works

For this innovation challenge, we’re looking for projects which specifically address the local news sector, and which aim to generate revenue or increase audience engagement. Past innovation programs have produced ideas for a new kind of paywall or a new way of distributing news. Others produced new thinking on an organization’s workflows and the way social media unlocks audiences.

A panel will evaluate the submissions and fund selected projects up to $300K, with funding for up to 70 percent of the total project cost. The projects will be reviewed against four specific factors, which include encouraging applicants to share their knowledge by, for example, publishing case studies or holding a public seminar. Other criteria include the impact projects will have on the news ecosystem, how innovative they are and how feasible the plan is to achieve.

Potential applicants in Canada and the United States can view the full criteria on our website. Applications open on May 28 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, and the deadline to submit is July 15, 2019 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. For more information, tune in to our webinar Town Hall on YouTube, Thursday, June 25 at 10.00 a.m. Pacific for a Q&A with members of the team.

We don’t have the answers, but what we do know is that innovation can come from anywhere and everywhere. We want to make sure that all news organizations, large and small,, traditional publishers and new entrants, have the opportunity to share new ideas for a more sustainable industry. Anyone aiming to build innovative media projects is welcome to apply. See the application form and more details on our website.

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How foster care advocacy led a Googler to her family

How AI could tackle a problem shared by a billion people

A moment of remembrance on Memorial Day

How artists use AI and AR: collaborations with Google Arts & Culture

A few new features to try on your next video call with Google Duo

What’s for dinner? Order it with Google

Tag Manager: Introducing Custom Templates

Your commute just got easier with Google Pay and the Assistant

Tools to help you vote in the EU elections

You probably turn to the web to get information about an election before casting your vote—and you want to get to the important stuff quickly, like learning more about your candidates and understanding how to cast your ballot. To help you find the information you need about the European Parliamentary elections, we’ve introduced a set of useful features across Search in the European Union.  

Helping EU citizens find election information in Search

When you search for instructions for how to votein your country, you now see those details right on the results page. We source this data directly fromthe European Parliament to ensure you get trusted information.

Supporting the electoral process also means helping voters learn more about their choices in the elections by providing accurate information about candidates, political parties and their key priorities. The German Press Agency (dpa) provides us with information from electoral commissions in each EU country on candidates and parties running in the elections. This information appears within Knowledge Panels—dedicated spaces with key information about those parties and politicians when you search for their names.

Candidates who claim their Knowledge Panels have been able to submit a brief statement outlining their electoral platform, a set of top three policy priorities and links to relevant social media profiles. All is visible right inside the Knowledge Panel in the local language of the candidate. Political parties running in the EU elections are also able to claim ownership of their panels and use Posts on Google to provide updates in the form of videos, text, or event listings, again available right on Search.

Bringing more transparency to election advertising online

To help people better understand the election ads they see online, earlier this year we outlined a new process to verify advertisers for the EU Parliamentary elections. We also require that these verified election ads incorporate a clear “paid for by” disclosure. We recently launched our EU political advertising transparency report, alongside a library of relevant ads that appear across Google and YouTube in the run up to the elections. We’ve made this data downloadable, so researchers and journalists can easily use and analyze the content.

With these tools, we hope that it will be easier to get the information you need in order to vote in the EU elections.

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How the San Francisco 49ers spent a day as Google "interns"

A new look for Google Search

Europe talks: helping Europeans get to know each other better

Little kid, big campus: reporting live from Take Your Child to Work Day

It was the start of just another work day for thousands of Googlers at our headquarters in Mountain View. But for the hundreds of fidgeting kids lined up on the sidewalk at the Googleplex, a special day was about to begin. The sun was shining, the Kidz Bop was bopping, the bubbles (not that kind) were flowing. This year’s Take Your Child to Work Day at Google had officially arrived.

Well, almost. As the minutes ticked by until the gates opened, I waited with Peri, our 6-year-old reporter (daughter of a Googler and aspiring YouTuber) who led the coverage of this year’s event. As she quietly looked down at her sneakers, perhaps she was asking herself—as many of us do on a Tuesday morning—what the day would bring.

Turns out the secret recipe to managing first-grade talent is part one-on-none soccer, part floss (the dance move, not dental … come on, Mom!), and part completely unscripted and unfettered access to a microphone. Hold the organic snacks. Who knew?

Minutes later we were off to the races. Building Legos, sticking our hands in water tanks, petting a four-foot alligator (wait, what?), diving in colorful ball pits (this *is* Google, after all) and of course learning just a little bit more about what Mom or Dad really does at work all day long. Guess those few hours away from school weren’t so bad after all.

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Finding my authentic self, from the outside looking in

Bose speakers get smarter with the Google Assistant

Research details Android growth in the enterprise

Google.org and the Family Independence Initiative collaborate to empower low-income families

Since 2015, the Family Independence Initiative

http://bit.ly/2M7pRaq

(FII) has used over $2.5 million in Google.org grants to empower families to escape poverty. Their technology platform UpTogether helps low-income families access small cash investments, connect with each other and share solutions—like how to find childcare or strategies to pay off debt. With the grants last year, FII improved their technology platform and expanded their sites to more cities including Austin and Chicago.

This year, the Family Independence Initiative is embarking on a mission of collaborative research to shift what’s possible for low-income families. And today, we’re expanding our investment in FII with a $1 million grant to support a pilot project called Trust and Invest Collaborative, which aims to guide policy decisions that will increase economic mobility for low-income families and their children. The grant will help FII, the City of Boston and the Department of Transitional Assistance examine learnings and successes from FII, and replicate them in future government services offered to low-income families.

In addition to our original grants to FII, we offered Google’s technical expertise. Over the last six months, six Google.org Fellows have been working full-time with FII to use their engineering and user experience expertise to help improve UpTogether. They used machine learning and natural language processing to make UpTogether’s data more useful in determining what leads to family success and to make it easier for families to share their own solutions with each other. These improvements in data quality will support the research for the pilot in Boston and Cambridge and help FII continue to share learnings from families’ own voices with future collaborators.

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Behind Magenta, the tech that rocked I/O

How car-loving Googlers turned a “lemon” into lemonade

Glass Enterprise Edition 2: faster and more helpful

Tech Exchange students reflect on their future careers

A promising step forward for predicting lung cancer

Collaborating to protect nearly anonymous animals

New features to make audio more accessible on your phone

Make your smart home more accessible with new tutorials

Three new machine learning courses

Many years ago, I took a dance lesson in Budapest to learn the csárdás, a Hungarian folk dance. The instructor shouted directions to me in enthusiastic Hungarian, a language I didn't understand, yet I still learned the dance by mimicking the instructor and the expert students. Now, I do love clear directions in a lesson—I am a technical writer, after all—but it’s remarkable what a person can learn by emulating the experts.  

In fact, you can learn a lot about machine learning by emulating the experts. That’s why we’ve teamed with ML experts to create online courses to help researchers, developers, and students. Here are three new courses:

• Clustering: Introduces clustering techniques, which help find patterns and related groups in complex data. This course focuses on k-means, which is the most popular clustering algorithm. Although k-means is relatively easy to understand, defining similarity measures for k-means is challenging and fascinating.
• Recommendation Systems: Teaches you how to create ML models that suggest relevant content to users, leveraging the experiences of Google's recommendation system experts. You'll discover both content-based and collaborative filtering, and uncover the mathematical alchemy of matrix factorization. To get the most out of this course, you'll need at least a little background in linear algebra.
• Testing and Debugging: Explains the tricks that Google's ML experts use to test and debug ML models. Google's ML experts have spent thousands of hours deciphering the signals that faulty ML models emit. Learn from their mistakes.    

These new courses are engaging, practical, and helpful. They build on a series of courses we released last year, starting with Machine Learning Course Crash (MLCC), which teaches the fundamentals of ML. If you enjoyed MLCC, you're ready for these new courses. They will push you to think differently about the way you approach your work. Take these courses to copy the moves of the world's best ML experts.

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Building for all learners with new apps, tools, and resources

Sharing Hawaiian food and tradition with generations to come

Highway Inn is an Oahu-based restaurant founded by Hawaii-born Japanese-American Seiichi Toguchi. At the start of World War II, Seiichi was taken from his home to an internment camp in California and assigned to work in the mess halls. There, Japanese-American chefs from around the country taught him how to cook, eventually inspiring him to open Highway Inn to share the foods he loved growing up. Seiichi passed the restaurant down to his son Bobby Toguchi, who has since passed it to his daughter, Monica Toguchi Ryan. Their family has been proudly serving authentic Hawaiian food for over 70 years.

As the third generation owner, Monica was determined to not just honor her family traditions and legacy, but also to share with younger generations the kinds of food that keep them connected to Hawaiian and local food culture. When her grandfather started the restaurant, he relied on word of mouth to reach new customers. Now, Monica uses Google Ads and their Business Profile on Google to connect with customers, helping them to grow from one location to three across Oahu. She and her family hope to continue preserving the beauty and tradition of Hawaiian food for generations to come.

This Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we're telling this and other stories, like Kruti Dance Academy from Atlanta, Georgia. They are two of the many Asian American and Pacific Islander-owned small businesses having an impact on their local communities.

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We hear you: updates to Works with Nest

Last week we announced that we would stop supporting the Works with Nest (WWN) program on August 31, 2019 and transition to the Works with Google Assistant platform (WWGA). The decision to retire WWN was made to unify our efforts around third-party connected home devices under a single platform for developers to build features for a more helpful home. The goal is to simplify the experience for developers and to give you more control over how your data is shared. Since the announcement, we’ve received a lot of questions about this transition. Today we wanted to share our updated plan and clarify our approach.

First, we’re committed to supporting the integrations you value and minimizing disruptions during this transition, so here’s our updated plan for retiring WWN:

• Your existing devices and integrations will continue working with your Nest Account, however you won’t have access to new features that will be available with a Google Account. If we make changes to the existing WWN connections available to you with your Nest Account, we will make sure to keep you informed.

• We’ll stop accepting new WWN connections on August 31, 2019. Once your WWN functionality is available on the WWGA platform you can migrate with minimal disruption from a Nest Account to a Google Account.

Second, we want to clarify how this migration will work for you. Moving forward, we’ll deliver a single consumer and developer experience through the Google Assistant. WWGA already works with over 3,500 partners and 30,000 devices, and integrates seamlessly with Assistant Routines. Routines allow anyone to quickly customize how their smart devices work together based on simple triggers—whether you’re leaving home or going to bed.

One of the most popular WWN features is to automatically trigger routines based on Home/Away status. Later this year, we'll bring that same functionality to the Google Assistant and provide more device options for you to choose from. For example, you’ll be able to have your smart light bulbs automatically turn off when you leave your home. Routines can be created from the Google Home or Assistant apps, and can be created using the hardware you already own. Plus we’re making lots of improvements to setup and managing Routines to make them even easier to use.

We recognize you may want your Nest devices to work with other connected ecosystems. We’re working with Amazon to migrate the Nest skill that lets you control your Nest thermostat and view your Nest camera livestream via Amazon Alexa. Additionally, we’re working with other partners to offer connected experiences that deliver more custom integrations.

For these custom integrations, partners will undergo security audits and we’ll control what data is shared and how it can be used. You’ll aso have more control over which devices these partners will see by choosing the specific devices you want to share. For example, you’ll be able to share your outdoor cameras, but not the camera in your nursery, with a security partner.

We know we can't build a one-size-fits-all solution, so we're moving quickly to work with our most popular developers to create and support helpful interactions that give you the best of Google Nest. Our goal remains to give you the tools you need to make your home, and those of other Nest users, helpful in the ways that matter most to you.

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Affirming the identities of teachers and students in the classroom through #ISeeMe

Editor’s note: We’re thrilled to have Kristina Joye Lyles from DonorsChoose.org as a guest author, sharing about teaming up with Google.org to launch the #ISeeMe campaign.

I joined DonorsChoose.org in 2013 and have long been working with organizations like Google.org who share our belief in the power of teachers. To date, Google.org has provided over $25 million to support classrooms on DonorsChoose.org, and last week, they committed an additional $5 million to teachers, with a focus on supporting diverse and inclusive classrooms. Together, we’re kicking off #ISeeMe, a new effort to enable teachers and students across the country to celebrate their identities in their classrooms.

As a military brat, I attended many public schools across the U.S. but only had two teachers of color from kindergarten through twelfth grade. My teachers and professors of color had a particularly strong impact on me as mentors and role models; I was encouraged to see them as leaders in our school community, and their presence alone showed me that diversity and representation matter.

My story is like those of so many others. Research shows that students benefit from seeing themselves in their teachers and learning resources. For example, black students who have just one black teacher between third and fifth grade are 33 percent more likely to stay in school. Girls who attend high schools with a higher proportion of female STEM teachers are 19 percent more likely to graduate from college with a science or math major.

With this support from Google.org, teachers who are underrepresented in today’s public school classrooms--like teachers of color and female math and science teachers-- as well as all teachers looking to create more inclusive classrooms will get the support they need and deserve. Teachers from all backgrounds can take steps toward creating classrooms that reflect their students, whether they’re selecting novels with diverse characters to discuss or taking trainings to learn more about meeting the needs of students from culturally diverse backgrounds. And we’re eager to help them bring their ideas to life so that more students can see themselves reflected in their classrooms.

I’m thrilled that many teachers on DonorsChoose.org are already coming up with inspiring ways to foster classroom environments where every student can feel important and included.  Mr. Yung sees the power of food to bring his students together across different cultural backgrounds. Ms. McLeod is determined to bring her students from Lumberton, North Carolina, to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Toro-Maysaspires to bring her bilingual students books with culturally relevant heroes and heroines.

We hope you’ll join us and the philanthropists of various backgrounds who have lit the torch for #ISeeMe today. If you are a public school teacher, you can set up an #ISeeMe classroom project right now at DonorsChoose.org. You can also access free inclusive classroom resources and ideas created for educators, by educators at any time in Google’s Teacher Center. And for those of you who have been inspired by a teacher, we invite you to explore classroom projects that are eligible for Google.org’s #ISeeMe donation matching—we would love to have your support for these teachers and classrooms.

by via The Keyword

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Cathy Pearl has learned the art and science of conversation

Conversations can be tough. Whether you’re chit-chatting with a coworker or having an important talk with your partner, it’s easy to misinterpret, say the wrong thing, or accidentally offend someone. Now imagine teaching a computer how to avoid those minefields. That’s even tougher—and Googler Cathy Pearl knows exactly how difficult it is.

Cathy has made a career out of teaching computers how to talk to humans. She’s worked in the field of conversation design for decades, and now works in outreach at Google, where she helps spread the word about her field both within and outside of the company. She also served as a judge for this year’s Webby Awards, which is introducing a category for voice user interfaces for the very first time.  (Google ended up winning several awards, too, in categories Cathy didn't judge.)

For this installment of The She Word, Cathy tells us about the challenges of teaching computers to talk to humans, and what that’s taught her about her own conversations:

Designing conversations is trickier than you think. That’s because human conversations are really complicated.

“Basically, conversation design is about teaching computers how to communicate like humans, not the other way around. We all know how to talk from a young age, so now we need to build computers that can understand us where we are, instead of forcing people to speak some foreign computer language.

People may not realize how complex it really is. Think about something that seems like a simple yes or no question: What if you asked me, ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’ Let’s say I replied, ‘Coffee will keep me awake.’ Is that a yes, or a no? Well, if you asked me first thing in the morning and I have a big presentation to write, it’s probably a yes. Ask me right before bed, and it’s probably a no. People say things like this all the time, but it’s hard for computers to understand.”

Voice recognition used to seem like the stuff of fiction. It's come a long way.

“I learned how to program when I was a kid, and I was really interested in learning to get the computer to talk back to me. I was really into movies like ‘War Games’ and TV shows like ‘Knight Rider’ that had these talking computers. Now, there was no such career at the time really, unless you were a researcher at Bell Labs or something like that. Coming out of grad school, I didn’t know of any jobs I could take in that field.

So really it was in 1999 when I saw a job opening for a company and they said, ‘Come work on speech recognition!’ And I said, ‘Well, that stuff doesn’t work, it’s still a science fiction thing.’ But they had a demo line you could call, and it was this fake banking demo where you could move money from checking to savings. It’s all you could do, really, but it worked. I was astounded. I spent eight years at the company learning the ins and outs of building voice user interfaces for phone systems for companies.”

When you find yourself at a career crossroads, don't limit your options.

“If you do something like IVF, it takes over your whole life. It’s a constant thing. That’s why I quit my job. You can’t plan vacations, you can’t plan work meetings, because you have to go to the doctor’s office. And it’s so disruptive. After nearly 3 years of trying, I had my son. I spent the next three years as a stay-at-home mom.

I think what was hardest for me was the point where I thought, I absolutely want to go back to work now, which was earlier than those three years, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what resources to use to try and figure out what I should do to get back into a great career. I felt very alone in that way.

I went to a career counselor, and I just tried to start saying yes to more things. So when somebody asked me to give a talk, even if I didn’t think I was necessarily qualified, I said yes. I said yes to writing a book, which was just a terrifying prospect. It expanded my worldview of what was out there, and it opened a lot of doors to opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I think as women we often undersell ourselves.”

Teaching computers how to talk to us can teach us a lot about ourselves.

“So much of the time when we communicate, we want to be acknowledged. We don’t want you to try to solve problems. When I’m saying I had this really hard day, I don’t want my friend to say, ‘You know what you should do next time?’ No! I want you to say, ‘That sounds frustrating.’

That applies to voice user interfaces. With the Google Assistant, there’s a lot of stuff we can’t do yet. But it’s better to acknowledge the things we can’t do then just say, ‘I don’t understand.’ If someone says, ‘I want to rent a car,’ and we can’t do that, can we say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t rent cars yet?’ That’s more satisfying at a basic, human, primitive level, because at least they understood me.”

by via The Keyword

The Pixel 3a joins the Android Enterprise Recommended lineup

Android Enterprise Recommended continues to shape how organizations choose devices for their teams. According to a recent HMD smartphone purchase survey, 56 percent of IT decision makers have decided to only choose Android Enterprise Recommended devices for their business. Android Enterprise Recommended helps businesses select devices with confidence from a breadth of options, so they can find a quality device at a price that’s right for the organization.

Today, the Pixel 3a joins the Android Enterprise Recommended lineup. Announced at Google I/O last week, the new, more affordable Pixel has enterprise-grade security, with monthly security updates and the Titan M chip. A consistent Google user experience backed by machine learning and artificial intelligence helps your team work productively. Recently, a 2019 Gartner research report that evaluated mobile security determined that the Pixel 3 device family has the strongest performance for built-in security when compared to other mobile devices.

The Pixel 3a joins a group of devices in Android Enterprise Recommended that provide businesses with options of enterprise-grade performance and support for zero-touch enrollment at a budget-friendly price. The Nokia 7.1, Moto G7 and Sharp AQUOS Sense are among the many knowledge worker devices within the Android Enterprise Recommended portfolio that run Android 9 Pie, and offer strong productivity power and battery life at a cost below $400.

Since launching in 2018, Android Enterprise Recommended now offers devices from over 20 OEMs, with knowledge worker, rugged devices and tablets in our portfolio. We also help companies secure and manage their devices with Android Enterprise Recommended EMM and Managed Service Provider partners. Learn more about the vast selection of devices available from our Android Enterprise Solutions Directory.

by via The Keyword

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With the Google Assistant, your Sonos system gets even smarter

When your hands are full hosting a party with family and friends, or when you’re just chilling at home, your Google Assistant can help you find your favorite playlist, skip to the next song or turn up the volume. Today, we’re bringing the Assistant to your Sonos system so that you can easily play music on any speaker in your house. You can also get help from the Assistant to manage your day, like traffic to work or your next appointment. With this software update, you can enable the Assistant on your Sonos One and Sonos Beam, or control any other Sonos product from a Google Assistant-enabled device, such as your phone, a smart speaker, or a Smart Display.

Here are a few things you can do with the Google Assistant on Sonos:

• Listen to some tunes. Or news. Or podcasts:While you’re able to play music from all the services the Assistant already supports—including YouTube Music, Pandora, and Spotify—you can also use the Assistant to skip to the next track, pause the music and change volume from the 100+ music services already available on Sonos. It’s also easy to catch up on the latest episode of your favorite podcast just by asking the Assistant.
• Enjoy entertainment:With the Google Assistant on Sonos Beam and a Chromecast-enabled TV, you can turn on the TV, switch from music to TV, and adjust the volume. You can also stream videos from popular services.
• Plan your day: Get help with things like your flight information, or traffic on your commute to work.
• Manage tasks:Set alarms and timers, pull up your calendar appointments, or add items to your shopping list.
• Get answers: Ask all your questions on sports, weather, calculations, translations and more.
• Control your home:Ask your Assistant on your speakers to adjust the temperature, lighting, and other smart home devices connected in your home.

Get started with the Assistant on your Sonos speaker or soundbar

If you already own a Sonos One or Sonos Beam, it’s easy to set up the Assistant. Your speaker and soundbar will automatically receive a software update introducing the Google Assistant as a voice assistant option. To add Google Assistant to your Sonos speakers,

1. Go to "Voice Services" in the Sonos app under Settings
2. Select Google Assistant
3. Follow the guided setup process

We’re starting in the U.S. and then will expand support to the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, The Netherlands and more over the coming months.

To showcase Sonos’ sound experience paired with the smart control of the Google Assistant, we invite you to attend an immersive, multi-sensory experience in New York, June 7-9. Featuring new music from The National and Holly Herndon, alongside tracks curated by the iconic Beggars Group labels (Rough Trade, 4AD, XL, Matador and Young Turks), we’ll help you explore how sound works, how it layers into music, and how music sparks emotion. Learn more and RSVP.

Your Sonos system, now paired with the helpfulness of the Google Assistant, gives you more choices than ever to enjoy and control your music and entertainment.

by via The Keyword

A global hub for privacy engineering, in the heart of Europe

Last week at I/O, our annual developer conference in California, I shared how we’re working to build a more helpful Google for everyone. Keeping people safe online, and their information private and secure, is a big part of how we do this. We believe that privacy and safety must be equally available to everyone in the world, and we bring that to life with products that empower everyone with clear and meaningful choices around their data.

To build on that commitment, this week, we’re officially opening the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Munich, Germany. We’re growing our operations and doubling the number of privacy engineers in Munich to more than 200 by the end of 2019, making Germany a global hub for Google’s cross-product privacy engineering efforts. The team will work hand-in-hand with privacy specialists in Google offices across Europe and globally, and the products built there will be used around the world.

It’s no accident that we’re building our privacy hub in the heart of Europe, and in a country that in many ways reflects how Europeans think about online safety, privacy and security. Many of our privacy products have been built in Munich, including Google Account, a central place where you can control your privacy when you use Google products. Today, more than 20 million people visit Google Account every day to review their settings, using tools like Privacy Checkup, which provides a quick and easy walk-through of your privacy settings.

Our Munich-based privacy engineers have also made it easier for you to make decisions about your data by making privacy controls easy to find, without ever leaving the app. This capability is already in Search, and we’re rolling it out to Maps, the Assistant and YouTube, too.  

Building privacy and security into the core of our products doesn’t just mean keeping people safe while using Google’s products—it also means keeping people safe when they browse the web. Munich is also home to engineering teams who have built our privacy and security features into the Chrome browser—like enhanced password management and tools and improvements for our cookie controls.

This is a major milestone in our investments in Europe. Since 2007, we’ve grown in Munich to more than 750 people, hailing from more than 60 countries. We’ll continue to invest in all parts of our operation, including the GSEC team. This year’s expansion will take us beyond 1,000 employees for the first time, making the office a true global hub not only for privacy engineering, but for research and product development, as well.

We’re also working to empower more organizations to do this important work with a new Google Impact Challenge on Safety. It’s a 10 million euro grant fund to support nonprofits, universities, academic research institutions, for-profit social enterprises and other organizations that are already working across Europe on a range of safety issues, from keeping young people safe online to addressing hate crimes in their communities.

These announcements mark a significant step forward in making privacy and security a reality for everyone, and we’re excited our teams in Munich are leading the way.

by via The Keyword

Supporting the vital work of European safety organizations

All of us have a responsibility to help keep people safe online. At Google that means doing all we can to make our products safe and combat abuse of our platforms. It also means thinking beyond just our corner of the internet and supporting the work of others in Europe.

That’s why we’re launching a €10 million European grant fund—the Google.org Impact Challenge on Safety—to support nonprofits, universities, academic research institutions, for-profit social enterprises and other expert organisations across Europe working on safety issues. These organisations might be focused on tackling hate and extremism in their communities, or helping young people stay safe online. They’re working on topics that don’t necessarily start when you open a laptop or end when you close one, but where technology can still play a role.

Through a long partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), we’ve already started on this work. It’s crucial for us to support and partner with safety experts on the ground who are working to foster a safer online experience. These organizations might need funding to develop new ways to use technology to solve age-old problems. Other groups might need more resources to help deal with areas where technology has added a new dimension to an existing topic, like education. In both cases, we’ll open up access to funding and scope volunteer opportunities for Googlers to support expert organizations across Europe.

Learning from experts is key to our ongoing work to make our own products safer and help people enjoy all the web has to offer, safely and with confidence. Our partnership with ISD and our Google.org Innovation Fund in the U.K. led to the creation of new programs and technologies designed to keep people safer on and offline, and build empathy and tolerance. Take KO Racism by Limehouse Boxing Academy, which runs boxing workshops with a twist: each session includes an open discussion about racism and prejudice supplemented with impactful videos. Or Virtual Inclusion by The Open University, which uses virtual reality to immerse the viewer in a day in the life of a socially-discriminated young person, and ultimately builds trust and empathy. We’ve seen real impact with this fund and partnership on a U.K. level and now we want to achieve even more at the European level. Already our existing partnerships with expert safety organizations in Europe mean we’ve been able to train well over 1 million young people through our Be Internet Awesome and Be Internet Citizens safety programs in 2018.

So now, we’ll offer grants of up to €1,000,000 to selected applicants from across Europe, and we’ll consider both online and offline projects. We’ll be running events and workshops from May onwards in countries around Europe to engage with organizations and support their application processes. Applications are now open and grant applications will be reviewed by an expert board of European safety experts and thought-leaders, including Helle Thorning Schmidt, outgoing Save the Children CEO; Renske van der Veer, director of the Netherlands’ International Centre for Counter Terrorism; and Thomas Krüger, President of Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education. We understand our responsibility to drive a free, open and safer internet and we’re honored to support this important work to make meaningful progress together.

by via The Keyword

Ask a Techspert: What’s so interesting about spreadsheets?

Editor’s Note: Do you ever feel like a fish out of water? Try being a tech novice and talking to an engineer at a place like Google. Ask a Techspert is a new series on the Keyword asking Googler experts to explain complicated technology for the rest of us. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but just enough to make you sound smart at a dinner party.

The spreadsheet wizard: Every office has one. They’re masters of functions and pivot tables. It’s as if they hold the secrets of the universe, while I fumble around just trying to alphabetize something.

In today’s workplace, spreadsheets are in, and endless stacks of paper containing years of information are out. That got me wondering: Since when did spreadsheets become “a thing,” anyway? How did they become the de facto way to organize data? And what does the future of spreadsheets look like?

For this edition of Ask a Techspert, I sat down with Ryan Weber, a G Suite Product Manager who works on Google Sheets, to get an expert’s take on how users look to spreadsheets to manage their data. Ryan and his team not only know how we use spreadsheets today, but also have a good idea of how we’ll use them in the future.

How did spreadsheets and computers first meet?  

“Spreadsheets were the first ‘killer app’ of the personal computer,” Ryan told me. “People got them for their home and for their business, and it allowed people to really unlock the true value of a computer.” By “killer app,” Ryan means software so popular that it becomes one of the main reasons many people use a device.  

Essentially, spreadsheets were one of the reasons to actually go out buy a computer for the first time. They presented a technological alternative to all of those paper ledgers and books that, for centuries, have been used to organize information. We take it for granted now, but consider what a game changer it was to have a new, more efficient way to organize data. The advent of spreadsheets made computers useful to millions, who use spreadsheets for anything from wedding guest lists to financial projections for Fortune 500 companies.

How are spreadsheets used in computing today?

These days, you don’t have to write code or know how to create complex formulas in a spreadsheet to make data work for you. “Sheets allows someone to easily generate valuable analysis by using simple tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI),” Ryan says. “AI allows you to play with data in new ways, including automatically getting suggestions for formulas, charts and pivot tables, or even being able to use natural language to ask questions via Sheets Explore.”

This capability means they’re usable by anyone, not just experts, which Ryan calls “democratizing data analysis.” And as the uses and capabilities of Sheets continues to evolve, it will continue to expand to even more people, helping them in more ways in both their personal and professional lives.

Because Sheets is stored in the cloud, it allows everyone to see and edit the same file at the same time. This is particularly helpful for businesses which rely on G Suite apps, like Sheets, to collaborate on heavy duty analyses with multiple people. “Historically, this idea of a single source coupled with real-time collaboration was what made Sheets stand out from other spreadsheets from its inception,” Ryan says. “You don’t have to worry about sending around spreadsheet attachments and then trying to merge them later. This seamless collaboration in G Suite is what makes our tools different.”

What is the future of spreadsheets?

After 40 years, it’s clear that spreadsheets are here to stay. But like many other technologies, AI can dramatically affect how useful spreadsheets are to us. Ryan says Google is developing new ways to incorporate AI into Sheets for just that reason. Now, the team is looking into using AI to automatically clean and format data so it’s in good shape and ready to be used in your analysis.

The team is also looking to increase the types of data available for analysis, since information can come from all sorts of places, especially at work. “We’re making it easier to connect large datasets to Sheets from other critical data sources in your company, or even connect important data from outside of your company into Sheets. We want to ensure that data is easy to access and analyze so you can do what you need to do,” Ryan says.

So, will futuristic AI-powered spreadsheets know where to seat your mother’s mahjong friends at your wedding? As of now, that’s sadly unlikely. You’re still on your own to figure out that social minefield.

by via The Keyword

Helping businesses grow across all 50 U.S. states

Small businesses play a vital role in American life. From the restaurants that serve as places to gather over a meal, to the bookshops and hardware stores that treat customers like family and sponsor local soccer teams, small businesses are the backbone of our communities.

So I’m really proud of the work Google does to help local businesses across the United States use the power of the web to grow and thrive. Our U.S. Economic Impact Report, released today, shows that in 2018, our Search and Advertising tools helped create $335 billion in economic activity for millions of businesses, website publishers, and nonprofits across the country—up from $283 billion in 2017. Each month, we drive over 1 billion connections for businesses nationwide, like phone calls or online reservations. We’re also connecting businesses with customers overseas: in fact, in 2018 more than 35 percent of clicks for U.S. business advertising on Google came from places outside the U.S.

We’re also working with business owners in their own hometowns through Grow with Google, our initiative to create economic opportunity for everyone. Since 2017, Googlers have traveled to more than 50 cities around the country, training over 3 million Americans in digital skills to help them prepare for work, find jobs and grow their businesses. Digital skills are a must-have in today’s economy, and our goal is to ensure that every business owner has the skills they need to succeed.

One of those business owners is Sara Irvani, who runs Okabashi, an American footwear company her family founded after arriving to the U.S. during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Okabashi is located in Buford, Georgia, a small town that was once a major American shoemaking hub. While other American shoe manufacturers have moved their operations abroad, Sara is committed to keeping her business in Buford and bringing economic opportunity to her hometown and her 200 employees.

To make this possible, Sara has made a big investment in bolstering the company’s digital presence. It’s a smart decision—data shows that small businesses that use advanced digital tools, such as online advertising and data analytics, experienced revenue growth in the previous year that was nearly four times as high. In Sara’s case, she uses Google Analytics to better understand the kind of shoe designs her customers are most excited about, and those insights help her team design new products that keep people coming back to purchase Okabashi shoes. She’s also able to reach customers—both here and abroad—by using Google Ads. Now, 64 percent of the company’s online sales come in through the platform. To date, her company has sold 35 million pairs of shoes to customers in 11 countries.

Some of my other favorite stories from the 2018 report include how Google employees have  helped Amini’s, a specialty furniture store in St. Louis build a new website and a robust e-commerce strategy. In rural New Hampshire, Fuller’s Sugarhouse was able to share its maple syrup with customers in Switzerland, France, Australia, Brazil and Mexico. We’ve also helped many veteran-owned businesses, nonprofits, and digital businesses to make Google products and programs work for them.

While the U.S. Economic Impact Report only focuses on activity in the U.S., we’re working with partners to expand economic opportunity all over the world. Last week we announced that Grow with Google has helped to train more than 10 million with digital skills in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and earlier this year, we released a report detailing our impact in Brazil, with more reports to come in other countries later this year.

Supporting the success of businesses, partners, and communities is an important part of our overall vision of building a more helpful Google for everyone. To learn more about how Google can help businesses, go to google.com/economicimpact.

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"Dancing with a machine:" Bill T. Jones on AI and art

In early 2019, the Google Creative Lab partnered with Bill T. Jones, a pioneering choreographer, two-time Tony Award Winner, MacArthur Fellow, National Medal of the Arts Honoree, and artistic director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company of New York Live Arts. We teamed up to explore the creative possibilities of speech recognition and PoseNet, which is Google’s machine-learning model that estimates human poses in real time in the browser.

We sat down with Bill to hear his reflections on working at the intersection of art, technology, identity and the body. Try out the experiments and watch a short film about the collaboration at g.co/billtjonesai. 

Why did you collaborate with Google on AI experiments?

The idea of machine learning intrigues me. The theme of our company’s Live Ideas Fest this year is artificial intelligence. AI is supposed to take us into the next century and important things are supposed to be happening with this technology, so I wanted to see if we could use it to stir real human emotion. Maybe it’s ego, but I want to be the one to know how to use PoseNet to make somebody cry. How do you get the technology to be weighted with meaning and import?

How have you experimented with technology over the course of your career?

Back in the ‘80s, Arnie Zane [Jones’s partner and company co-founder] and I decided we didn’t want to work with technology anymore because the pure art of sweat and bodies on stage should be enough. Technology just steals your thunder. Then a friend said, “Technology can suggest the beyond. Technology can project what is at stake when you die. When you see these figures, they’re no longer human, they’re something else.” So we started working with more state-of-the-art technologies. Later, I did a project called “Ghostcatching” with 3D motion capture. At that time, the team was saying, “we want to capture your movement so that in 50 years we could reconstitute your performance.” That’s how people were thinking years ago, and seems to still be a preoccupation now. They said they wanted to “decouple me from my personality.” Maybe I’m romantic, but I don't think that’s possible. So, my focus with this project was not on how to replace the performer, but complement them.

What was it like experimenting with AI?

I’ve never collaborated with a machine before. It's a whole other learning curve. We are taught in the art world that you don’t get many chances. This experience contrasted that notion. It was refreshing to co-create with the Google team whose approach was playful and iterative.

Were there moments you felt this technology was in the service of dance? 

In the service of dance? I say this with great respect: it's almost antithetical to everything I thought dance was. The webcam’s field of vision determines a lot about how we move. Dance for us is often times in an empty room that implies infinite space. But working with a webcam, there is a very prescribed space. Limitations are not bad in art making, but they were a new challenge. It was a shift creating something for the screen and not the stage.

What was it like shifting from creating for the stage to the screen?

I felt like I was being asked: Come out of the place that you as an artist come from, the avant-garde. Come and work with a medium that's available to millions of people. That's wonderful, but it's also a responsibility. The meaningful things people make with this are going to be very weird in a way, aren't they? Very kind of exciting. I'm appreciative of being part of the development of this.

Where do you see AI going? Will you work with it more in the future? 

I understand context is the next frontier in machine learning. This seems paramount for art making. I hope one day soon they make a machine I can dance with. I’d like to dance with a machine, just to see what that’s like.

by via The Keyword

New career tools to help military spouses thrive

Service members aren’t alone in making great sacrifices for the good of our country. Military spouses are the backbone of their families and communities, often serving alongside service members and assuming responsibilities on the homefront. As a military spouse, I’ve experienced the challenges that this life brings. While separated from my husband for two and a half years, I took on all responsibilities for our home and managed several out-of-state moves.

The realities I’ve faced being part of a military family made it incredibly difficult to balance my husband’s military career with my own career goals and aspirations. Military spouses are resilient leaders with diverse perspectives, making them powerful assets to the workplace. To ensure that this community continues to thrive in the workplace, this Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Google is excited to share new initiatives that will empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, wherever they’re located.

According to a 2017 report from Hiring Our Heroes, 16 percent of military spouses are unemployed–a figure that’s four times higher than the national rate. And more than 55 percent are underemployed, working in roles below their abilities or education levels.

Despite this hurdle, there are spouses around the world who’ve built fulfilling careers that fit a military lifestyle. In Durham, North Carolina, the Grow with Google team met Kelly Grivner-Kelly, a military spouse whose frequent moves were holding her back in her job search. This changed when she found a job as a program manager where she can work from home–and stay on remotely after her next move.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the team met Krystel Spell, who started the blog Army Wife 101 and founded an influencer agency for military spouses after noticing a lack of resources available to her community. Through flexible career paths and entrepreneurial endeavours, more military spouses are pursuing their career goals, becoming breadwinners, and taking their work with them from place to place. And technology is making it easier.

Last year, Grow with Google developed tools and resources for the U.S. military community. Knowing the important role military spouses play, we want to continue using technology to address the unique challenges military spouses face as they build their careers.

Our improved experience within jobs on Google Search makes it easier to find quality remote jobs. Now, you can search for jobs that match your skill set, like “sales jobs” and filter your location to “work from home” to see a list of relevant job listings that meet your criteria. Remote work requires its own kind of expertise, so we created hands-on training that offers helpful tools and advice to set military spouses up for success in remote jobs. A new course from Google’s Applied Digital Skills program, a free online curriculum for digital skills, helps users learn about workplace collaboration tools like Docs, Calendar and Hangouts. We’ve also added two minicourses specifically for military spouses to the Primer app, a free resource for learning business and marketing skills. These minicourses share tips for transitioning to remote work, working from home and the basics of starting and growing an online business.

To ensure that military spouses across the country can benefit from these tools and resources, we’re supporting two organizations with a long history of supporting military spouses. We’ll be providing a Google.org grant to the Institute for Veteran and Military Families (IVMF) to offer IT training and career guidance to their network. The grant will enable IVMF to provide 1,500 scholarships for the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program, along with professional support and career navigation. Google’s IT Certificate program prepares beginners for entry-level jobs in IT support in about six months. We’ll also be partnering with Blue Star Families, an organization that provides support to military families, including career guidance for spouses. Blue Star Families will share our career preparation training with at least 10,000 spouses across its nationwide network of military families.

My vision is that these new resources empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, regardless of their location or balance of responsibilities. I hope these new efforts ease some of the career challenges military spouses often face as they plan for and build toward their futures. To learn more about our free tools and resources to help military spouses build flexible careers, visit grow.google/militaryspouses.

by via The Keyword

An update on first price auctions for Google Ad Manager

We’ve heard from many of our partners that they want our help to simplify how they manage their revenue from advertising. That’s why Google Ad Manager will be transitioning to a unified, first price auction this year. This change will simplify our publisher platform and create a fair and transparent auction for everyone, helping our partners create sustainable businesses with advertising. Today, we’d like to share additional details as we prepare to transition to a first price auction.

Reducing complexity

Currently, Ad Manager may run two different auctions for a specific ad. A second price, real-time bidding auction run with Authorized Buyers — which includes Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and other Demand Side Platforms — followed by a first price auction that compares the winning price from the second price auction with a publisher’s guaranteed and non-guaranteed advertising campaigns, as well as bids from Exchange Bidding buyers. By switching to a unified first price auction, we can reduce this multi-stage process and provide all non-guaranteed advertising sources the same opportunity to win an auction.

After the transition, Ad Manager will have a single auction that compares the prices from a publisher’s guaranteed campaigns with all of a publisher’s non-guaranteed advertising sources — including real-time bidding partners, such as Authorized Buyers and Exchange Bidding partners — and prices from non-guaranteed line items, like those from a publisher’s header bidding implementation. Going forward, no price from any of a publisher’s non-guaranteed advertising sources will be shared with another buyer before they bid in the auction. As has always been the case, all real-time bidding partners integrated with Ad Manager — including Google Ads and Display & Video 360 — will be notified of an auction at the same time.

Increasing transparency

Moving to a unified first price auction will allow us to provide additional auction transparency to both publishers and advertisers. Today, not all Authorized Buyers choose to share and receive bid data, resulting in gaps in historical auction data we can share with publishers and Authorized Buyers. When Ad Manager changes to a unified first price auction, we plan to require all Ad Manager partners to share and receive bid data. This change will allow us to provide publishers reporting on all bids submitted for their ads (including bids from Google Ads and Display & Video 360) and give all Authorized Buyers and Exchange Bidding buyers access to the price that was needed to win for auctions they submitted a bid to.

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“Moving to a first price auction puts Google at parity with other exchanges and SSPs in the market, and will contribute to a much fairer transactional process across demand sources. The move also provides significantly greater information transparency to both advertisers looking to understand their working media dollars, and publishers looking to assess the fair market value of their supply.” 

- Scott Mulqueen, VP Programmatic and Data Product Operations, Trusted Media Brands

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"Google’s move to first-price auctions and unified pricing is an opportunity to improve transparency throughout the ecosystem, including improved visibility of their own actions and practices, which I believe should benefit everyone.” 

- Richard Caccappolo, Chief Operating Officer, MailOnline

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"Brands and agencies are demanding a scaled, open, and unified approach to the modern marketing platform. MediaMath supports Google's effort to simplify the programmatic supply chain and provide more transparency in the media buying and selling process. These updates should help reduce friction between advertisers, publishers, and the broader tech ecosystem."

- Jeremy Steinberg, Global Head of Ecosystem, MediaMath

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How floor price strategy will change

Our shift to a unified, first price auction will require publishers to rethink how they use floor prices. In a second price auction, floor prices can be used to prevent advertisers from buying inventory below a specified price. But because of how second price auctions work — the highest bidder pays the second highest price — floor prices can also be used by publishers to increase the closing price of their auctions. This strategy is executed today when a publisher reviews their bid landscape data and compares it to their revenue reporting. If they notice that their auction closing prices (the auction second price) are significantly lower than their highest bids, oftentimes the publisher will raise their floor prices to increase their revenue in the short term. Over time, this behavior can erode trust in the benefits of a second price auction.

After transitioning to a first price auction, price floor strategies created to influence the second price auction closing will no longer be relevant. When approaching floor strategy, publishers should focus on understanding the true value of their inventory and adjust pricing based on their existing advertising deals and how buyers are valuing their inventory.  

How pricing rules will change

In addition to impacting how publishers are using floor price rules, changing to a first price auction in Ad Manager requires a change in how our rules function. Our existing price rules that only apply to our second price auction will no longer work in a first price auction.

That’s why we released a new feature to all publishers globally, called unified pricing rules. Our new unified pricing rules will help publishers more easily manage floor prices across all non-guaranteed partners. For example, instead of setting up the same floor prices in multiple places — in the auction in Ad Manager, and with their Exchange Bidding and other non-guaranteed advertising sources — which can take a lot of time and can lead to errors, a publisher can set up a single unified pricing rule to control pricing from one place. To maintain a fair and transparent auction, these rules will be applied to all partners equally, and cannot be set for individual buying platforms. We have set an initial limit of 100 rules, though as we roll out these changes we’ll be working with our partners to understand if this limit can support all use cases, or if a higher limit is necessary.

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“We welcome Google's move to first price auctions and unified pricing rules. These changes will help us simplify how we implement our most advanced pricing strategies between our header bidding partners, Ad Manager and Exchange Bidders. We believe this will help create a level playing field for non-guaranteed transactions and help us review the performance of our demand partners.” 

- Alex Payne, VP of Global Programmatic Solutions, VICE Media

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“We’ve built our technology to work with Ad Manager through Prebid and Exchange Bidding to help publishers monetize their inventory however they choose. We're glad to see Google shifting toward a more transparent and simplified approach to auctions, and we look forward to collaborating with them to ensure these changes are executed in a way that works for publishers and buyers alike.”  

- Tom Kershaw, Chief Technical Officer, Rubicon Project

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The switch to unified pricing rules and a unified first price auction will help our partners simplify how they manage advertising revenue and increase transparency for everyone in the ecosystem. We understand these changes will impact how publishers operate their advertising businesses, so over the next few months our teams will be working with our partners to help them with this transition. We are excited to take this next step together.

by via The Keyword

Count ‘em up: 100 things we announced at I/O ‘19

Another I/O is in the books! We played in sandboxes, watched eye-popping product demos and listened to AI-powered music. But the fun isn’t over! In case you missed it, here are 100 announcements we made at I/O:

Hardware

1. Hold the phone! Our new smartphones—the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL—hit the shelves this week, bringing together all the essential Google features at a lower price ($399 for the 5.6-inch display and $479 for the 6-inch model).
.2. Good things come in threes, like Pixel 3a’s color options. Choose from Purple-ish, Clearly White and Just Black.
3. And no matter what color your phone is, it has the same great Pixel camera. Capture shots in portrait mode and HDR+, or use Night Sight to take magical photos in low light (think outdoor concerts, swanky restaurants or night hikes with friends).
4. To add to the creativity, Time Lapse is coming to Pixel 3a. Soon you can capture an entire sunset within a few seconds of video.
5. All-day battery, baby! The Pixel 3a charges seven hours of battery life in 15 minutes and full battery can last up to 30 hours.
6. Squeeze the Pixel 3a to get the Google Assistant to send texts, find directions, set reminders and a lot more—simply by using your voice.
7. Hi, who’s there? The Google Assistant’s Call Screen feature (available in English in the U.S. and Canada) gives more information about who’s calling before you even answer your phone. Best of all, it helps save you from robocalls once and for all.
8. The Pixel 3a is protected against new threats with three years of security and operating system updates.
9. It also comes with the custom-built Titan M chip to help protect your most sensitive data.
10. All Pixel phones will get a preview of AR in Google Maps. So the next time you're getting around town, you can see walking directions overlaid on the world itself, rather than looking at a blue dot on a map.
11. Say hello to Google Nest. We’re bringing the Home products and Nest brand together to create a helpful home.
12. We welcomed the newest member of the Google Nest family: Google Nest Hub Max. Hub Max has a 10-inch screen, premium stereo sound, a camera with built-in Nest Cam features and the power of Google Assistant.
13. Live Albums on Nest Hub Max lets you select pictures of family and friends from your Google Photos to be displayed on the screen.
14. The built-in Nest Cam helps you keep an eye on things at home. You can turn the camera on when you’re away and check on things right from the Nest App on your phone.
15. The camera on Hub Max also lets you make video calls and leave personalized messages with Google’s video calling app, Duo.  
16. If you’re listening to music or watching a cooking tutorial, turn down the volume with a wave of your hand. With Gestures, you simply have to look at the Nest Hub Max and raise your hand to pause media.
17. The home view dashboard lets you control all your connected devices from one dashboard—and the Google Assistant now controls more than 30,000 smart devices from 3,500 brands.
18. Similar to Voice Match, you have the option to enable Nest Hub Max’s Face Match feature that recognizes who’s using the device and shares the most relevant information, like their calendar and estimated commute time.
19. We shared our new privacy commitments, explaining our security and privacy options for Google Nest products.
20. There’s a green light on the front of Hub Max that indicates when the camera is streaming. In addition, you have multiple controls to disable camera features, like the Nest Cam and Face Match.
21. Hub Max will be available in the U.S., U.K. and Australia this summer.
22. Google Nest Hub, formerly Google Home Hub, is now available in 12 more countries—Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain and Sweden.
23. And our prices are lower: Google Nest Hub available in the U.S. for $129, and starting today Google Home is $99 and Google Home Max is $299.

Assistant 

24. The Assistant is now on more than one billion devices, available in more than 30 languages across 80 countries.
25. The next generation Assistant will run on-device and answer queries up to 10 times faster, with almost zero latency. It will come to Pixel phones later this year.
26. Keep the conversation going. Now with Continued Conversation, you can make several requests in a row without having to say “Hey Google” each time.
27. We’re extending Duplex to the web to help you complete tasks faster. Just ask the Assistant, “Book a car with for my next trip,” and it will figure out the rest.
28. Sound the alarm! You can now stop a timer or alarm that you set on Google Home speakers and Smart Displays by simply saying, “stop.”
29. Help is on the way! With a new feature called Personal References, the Assistant will better understand you and reference to the important things in your life. Say you’ve told the Assistant which contact “Mom” is. You can then ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather like at my mom’s house this weekend?” and get the answer without any additional details.
30. Choose your next recipe to try, event to attend or podcast to listen to with Picks for You. This Assistant feature draws from past searches and other contextual cues to give you more personalized results.
31. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to access all of the helpfulness of the Assistant directly within Waze.
32. Take advantage of Google Assistant Driving Mode when you’re behind the wheel. The new dashboard automatically starts when you’re driving and displays the most relevant activities like navigation, messaging, calling and media.
33. It’s easier to use the Assistant to control your car remotely, so you can adjust your car’s temperature, check your fuel level or make sure your doors are locked without leaving the house.
34. Control your Assistant data and make privacy choices that are right for you from the “You” tab in your Assistant settings.
35. Ever Googled a “how-to” question? We’re giving content creators easy-to-use developer tools so in the coming months when you ask, “Hey Google, how do I install a dog door?” you’ll get a helpful step-by-step experience from a trusted source like DIY Networks.
36. The Assistant can now help you do specific things in some of your favorite apps. For example, you can say, “Hey Google, start my run in Nike Run Club.”
37. Game makers can now take full advantage of developing for Smart Displays' interactive screens, so you'll start seeing more games that combine voice, visuals and touch.

AI and ML

38. And the winner is…we unveiled the 20 Google AI Impact Challenge grantees  who are using AI to address societal challenges.
39. We’ve made progress on flood forecasting in India. Now we can better use AI to predict flood timing, location and severity across 90 percent of India, and share that information with Google Public Alerts.
40. Two bands took the stage at I/O—with a little help from machine learning. Both YACHT and The Flaming Lips worked with Google engineers to create music with Magenta, our AI tool for artistic creativity
41. Check out our new PAIR Guidebook, an external toolkit that will help ML practitioners make better, user-centered decisions when building with AI.
42. We’re taking the same AI research that makes our products better and using it to enhance user privacy. Federated learning allows Google’s AI products to work better for you, and work better for everyone, without collecting raw data from your devices.

Google News and Search 

43. Now it’s easier to stay in the know. The technology that powers Full Coverage in Google News is coming to Search to better organize search results for news-related topics and give you the context you need to understand a story.  
44. When you search for a news topic, you’ll have the option to see different points of a story—from a timeline of events to the key people involved—and surface a breadth of content including articles, tweets and even podcasts.
45. In the coming months, we’ll start including podcasts in Google Search results so you can listen to podcasts directly from the search results page or save an episode for later.

Augmented Reality and Google Lens

46. Seeing is believing! Soon you’ll be able to view 3D objects right from Search and place them into your own space.
47. Lens now provides more visual answers by using AR to overlay useful information and content onto the things you see. For example, if you see a dish you’d like to cook in an upcoming issue of Bon Appetit magazine, you’ll be able to point your camera at a recipe and have the page come to life and show you exactly how to make it.
48. Lens can help you decide what to order. Just point your camera at the menu, and Lens highlights which dishes are popular, right on the menu. Tap on a dish to see photos and snippets of reviews from Google Maps.
49. Now, you can point your camera at text and Lens will automatically overlay the translation right on top of the original words—it works in more than 100 languages.
50. Say what? When you point your camera at text, Lens can now read it out loud. You can also tap on a specific word to search for its definition. This feature is launching first in Google Go, our Search app for first-time smartphone users.

Privacy 

51. You’ll start seeing your Google Account profile icon appear more prominently across all Google products, so takes just one tap to access your privacy and security settings.
52. Now we’re making it easier to manage your data in Maps, the Assistant and YouTube (coming soon). For example, you'll be able to review and delete your location activity data directly in Google Maps, and then quickly get back to your directions.
53. New auto-delete controls for Location History and Web & App Activity allow you to choose to automatically and continuously delete your data.
54. We’re expanding Incognito mode—the option in Chrome that clears your browsing history after every session—to more of our products, including Maps.
55. Thanks to federated learning, Gboard has improved predictive typing as well as emoji predictions across tens of millions of devices.
56. We’ve built security keys directly into your Android phone, giving you easier and more convenient protection against phishing attacks. This is rolling out to all devices running Android 7.0 and above.

Android

57. Android Q’s newest features are centered around innovation, security, privacy and digital wellbeing.
58. A new gesture-based navigation lets you easily move between tasks and utilize a bigger screen.
59. Android Q has tools for developers to build cool apps for foldable phones and 5G, opening up new possibilities for experiences like gaming on your device.
60. Live Caption will automatically caption media playing on your phone—like videos podcasts, audio messages, even stuff you record yourself—across any app.
61. Smart Reply is getting even smarter! Not only will your phone show suggested replies, it’ll also help you take action, like opening addresses from a text message in an app like Maps.
62. You asked, we listened! Android Q brings Dark Theme. You can activate in Settings, or by turning on Battery Saver.
63. We’re bringing privacy to the top level of Settings so you can find all the important controls in one place.
64. Android Q arms you with new permission controls so you can share your location (or not) with apps on your own terms.
65. Time for a time out? With the new Focus Mode, you can get things done without distraction, by selecting the apps you want to stay active and pausing everything you don't.
66. And to help children and families find a better balance with technology, we’re making Family Link part of every device that has Digital Wellbeing, starting with Android Q.
67. Signed, sealed, delivered! There’s a new way to deliver important updates. With Project Mainline, we can update core OS components without a full OS update.
68. All Android devices with Q—including phones, tablets, TVs, and Android Auto—are required to encrypt user data.
69. Some of these features are available today in Android Q Beta which is available on 15 devices from 12 manufacturers (in addition to all Pixel phones).
70. Android Q brings lots of new emoji, including 53 new non-binary designs for emoji that Unicode defines as "genderless.”
71. Buckle up! Android Auto’s new design coming out this summer will help you get on the road faster, show you useful information at a glance and simplify common tasks while driving.
72. Now media developers will be able to build new entertainment experiences for Android-powered infotainment systems.
73. With Tiles on Wear OS by Google you have more swipeable access to things right from your wrist like your goals, next event, weather forecast, heart rate and timer.
74. Android TV platform now has more than 140 pay TV partners, 6 of the 10 top smart TV OEMs using the Android TV platform; and more than 5,000 apps and games in its ecosystem.

Chrome

75. It’s now easier to share files between Linux, Android, and Chrome OS using file manager.
76. Android Studio on Chrome OS helps you optimize your apps for Chrome OS—directly on your Chromebook.
77. All Chromebooks launched this year will be Linux-ready right out of the box.
78. We have more user transparency and controls, like improved cookie controls and more restrictions for fingerprinting across the web.

Ads

79. With the option to bid on tROAS, advertisers will soon be able to automatically pay more for users who are likely to spend more in apps, and pay less for users likely to spend less.
80. We’re teaming up with eight agencies
http://bit.ly/2PWq1jx
—Vidmob, Consumer Acquisition, Bamboo, Apptamin, Webpals, Creadits, Kaizen Ad and Kuaizi—to provide advertisers end-to-end creative development and consultation services.
81. We’ll be expanding a new monetization program, called Open Bidding, to all publishers later this year so developers can automatically  maximize the value of every impression automatically.
82. New transparency tools across browsers
http://bit.ly/2V2slpT
will give people greater visibility into the data that Google uses to personalize ads.
83. We also launched new AdMob tools for developers that help give more control over ad content, easily access metrics and quickly identify and remove bad ads.

Accessibility

84. Project Euphonia is using AI to improve computer's' abilities to understand and transcribe a diverse set of speech patterns, including impaired speech.
85. Live Relay uses on-device speech recognition and text-to-speech conversion to allow the phone to listen and speak on people’s behalf while they type.
86. Project Diva is a research effort that makes Google Assistant more accessible for people with disabilities.

More developer announcements

87. We’re launching a preview for Local Home SDK that lets smart home developers bring a new level of speed and reliability to smart home devices.
88. The next version of our Maps Android SDK is now available for public beta. It’s built on a common platform with the Google Maps mobile app, which means better performance and feature support.
89. A new Google Maps Platform integration with deck.gl will make high-quality data visualizations at scale possible.
90. We’re unifying our efforts around third-party connected home devices under a single platform for developers. Now we’ll be delivering a single consumer and developer experience through the Works with Google Assistant program.
91. We introduced updates in ARCore to Augmented Images and Light Estimation— features that let you build more interactive, and realistic experiences.
92. Scene Viewer is a new tool that lets users view 3D objects in AR right from your website.
93. Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first.

94. We released 11 new Jetpack libraries and open-sourced an early preview of Jetpack Compose, a new unbundled toolkit designed to simplify UI development.
95. Android Studio 3.5 Beta is available for download and includes improvements in three core areas: system health, feature polish and bugs.
96. Flutter 1.5 includes hundreds of changes in response to developer feedback, including updates for new App Store iOS SDK requirements, updates to the iOS and Material widgets, engine support for new device types, and Dart 2.3 featuring new UI-as-code language features.
97. We released the first technical preview of Flutter for the web.
98. Our in-app updates API is out of beta. Now people can install updates without ever leaving the app.
99. New metrics and insights in the Google Play Console help developers better measure app health and analyze performance.
100.A new change is coming to Chrome Canary to help image-heavy websites can load more quickly.

by via The Keyword