3 ways veterans can maximize their civilian job search

In 2007, I made the transition to civilian life after serving in the military for five years. Though I was sure my experience as an engineer in the U.S Army would be valuable to employers, I had far less experience writing a resume that would appeal to recruiters hiring for civilian jobs. It’s easy to find an email template online of what a resume should look like, but translating what you did in the military to civilian speak is a real challenge.

To support service members who are preparing for their own transitions to civilian careers, Grow with Google teamed up with experts from the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University and FourBlock. Together, we created new Applied Digital Skills lessons designed to help veterans find a job and succeed in the civilian workforce.

The job search begins with a resume, so let’s start there. If you’re a veteran looking to transition to the civilian workforce, here are three tips for creating or updating your resume for your job search.

1. Search for civilian job postings that interest you.

You can find job listings that call for skills you developed during your time in service by searching “jobs for veterans” on Google Search and entering your military occupation code (MOS, AFSC, NEC or rating). Watch this quick video lesson for more on finding civilian job listings related to your military experience.

2. Decide which military experience to include on your resume. 

When editing your resume, it’s important to write about your experience in a way that civilian recruiters will be able to understand. This includes highlighting traits you exhibited while fulfilling military duties, and replacing military-specific terms (think: your military occupation code) with words or phrases civilian employers will understand. For example, you might consider changing a term like “combat operations” to something that may be more likely to resonate with hiring managers, like “high-risk environment.”  Learn more about choosing military experiences to feature on your resume.

3. Update your resume to fit the job. 

To increase your chances of landing an interview, you’ll want to tailor your resume to fit the job description. This shows a recruiter that you have experience with the specific job they’re hiring for, even if your job title in the military was different. You can also tailor your skills section to the job listing, and highlight relevant coursework, certifications, or awards. Go deeper on tailoring your resume to a specific job listing.

To get more hands-on digital skills training to support you in your job search, check out our full Applied Digital Skills curriculum designed and curated for transitioning service members and veterans. And to learn more about Grow with Google’s free products, tools, and trainings for transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses, visit grow.google/veterans.

by Sean O’Keefe via The Keyword

Want to make a podcast? 5 tips to get you started

Editor’s Note: Luvvie Ajayi is the host of the podcasts Rants & Randomness and Jesus & Jollof and the author of the New York Times best-seller I’M JUDGING YOU: The Do-Better Manual.

So many people are talking about podcasting these days. Maybe you’ve been thinking of starting a podcast of your own, but you aren’t sure where to start. If so, I’m here to offer help. 

I’ve partnered with Google Podcasts and PRX on a free Podcasting 101 video series that launches today. Over the course of ten short episodes, my co-host Sean Rameswaram, host of Vox’s Today, Explained, and I walk you through all of the things you need to know to get your podcast started. Additionally, each video is subtitled in five languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hindi and Arabic).

I’m eager to share all the lessons I’ve learned since I launched two (yes, two!) podcasts in 2018. For me, podcasts are a new and intimate way to connect with my audience and tell the story of the world as I see it. I talk more about that in the very first episode of the series. Take a listen!

Podcasting 101 episode 1

OK, so you should really watch the videos to get all the good stuff, but here are some of my top tips to get you started: 

1. Define your who.When you’ve figured out your “why” for making your podcast, then you need to figure out “who” should listen. A focus statement like this can really help: 

• My show is about _________
• And on it you’ll hear _________
• And you should listen if you are _________.
  

2. Structure matters. Once you define who you are making your show for, you need to think about the format of your show. Surprisingly, figuring out a structure is something that can give you more flexibility. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. For example, on Rants & Randomness I have four regular segments: the Feel Good, the Rant, the Spotlight, and the Interview. I’m open to changing those segments, like when I have a really great guest and want to break out a separate episode just for them, but my listeners always know what to expect. 

3. Prepare for interviews. If you’re going to have a guest on your show, it’s your job to learn everything possible about them before you start interviewing. You want to have a plan for where you want the interview to go. And you definitely want to avoid asking the same questions that everybody else does. But also don’t be afraid to go off-script. Following your guest and your own curiosity is often how you get the good stuff. 

4. Write the way you talk. If you want your listeners to connect with you, you need to sound like yourself.  A good way to practice is to record yourself telling a friend your story. Listen back to the recording, and notice how you sound when you’re just naturally saying something. 

5. Connect with people. The challenge once you’ve made your show is reaching your listeners. With so many podcasts out there, you need to create ways for people to find you and to engage with your community. For example, I created my LuvvNation social network as a safe place for my community to show up and be themselves. I approach that network, and all of my social media channels, as a place to engage with my audience, not just blast out news of my work.

So, what are you waiting for? Binge the entire Podcasting 101 video series (all episodes are less than five minutes). Then go make your podcast, and tell me all about it with the hashtag #podcreator. 

by Luvvie Ajayi via The Keyword

"Clapping back" at racial stereotypes in a new book

Elijah Lawal just published his first book, but he’s been writing since he was 10 years old. Back when he was a kid, he wrote a story about a boy who ran away from home—and eventually became the president of Panama. His new book, published in the U.K. earlier this year, has very little to do with his imaginative works of little-kid fiction, but it came from a similar refusal to accept things the way they are. 

Elijah, who works in communications in Google’s London office, just wrote “The Clapback: Your Guide to Calling Out Racist Stereotypes.” He says it’s his attempt to debunk harmful stereotypes aimed at the black community, and to give people the tools to respond when they are faced with such myths. 

Each chapter introduces a stereotype, explains its origins and shows why it’s harmful. “If there's a stereotype that black people can't swim, and if I believe that false stereotype, then it means I'm very unlikely to go swimming,” he explains. “It means I’m very unlikely to take my kids swimming. That feeling is passed on to them, and they're very unlikely to take their kids swimming. Then before you know it there's not enough black representation in Olympic swimming.”

Elijah certainly wasn’t drawn to writing for the glamour factor. “Writing a book is hard, lonely and often boring,” he acknowledges in his writing. He worked on the book every weekend for three full years, because he felt compelled to help others. “I just felt that I've been blessed with this knowledge, and so I've got to try and share it with other people,” he says. “I thought the best way to do it was with a book.”

Trying to get the book published was equally unglamorous. With a full first draft in hand, he started pitching his book to literary agents, trying to find the one who would represent his work to publishing houses. The rejections immediately poured in—so much so that Elijah had to change his way of thinking about them. A former colleague convinced him to think of it like he was seeking rejections instead of acceptances, and make it like a game. “Trick yourself into believing that the aim is to get 100 rejections,” Elijah recalls learning. “Then when you get rejected 100 times, go for 200 rejections.” 

Eighty rejections in, and more than a year later, Elijah finally got the response he’d been hoping for. In fact, he got three agency acceptances in quick succession. When the first one appeared in his inbox at the end of a long workday, he got up from his desk, ducked into the nearest meeting room and did a little dance. The hardest part was over, and the agent he chose helped find a publisher. 

In fact, things went so smoothly from there that he’s already got ideas brewing for two or three more books. “I kind of pictured this as a trilogy, so: debunking racial stereotypes, then debunking gender stereotypes, and then debunking religious stereotypes," he says. And a fellow Googler gave him the idea of turning “The Clapback” into a kids’ book, an idea he’s also considering.

The project has broadened Elijah’s horizons both personally and professionally. When he started working on the book, he was in a job that didn’t require much writing. Committing himself to a regular writing practice not only filled a creative void in his life, but also helped him be more creative at work.

And his colleagues have loved the result. “The reception of the book has helped me realize how willing people are to engage on this issue internally at Google—I’m amazed by how many people have been so supportive,” he says. “That’s been one of the joys of having this published.”

by Katie Malczyk via The Keyword

Shaping ad experiences to an evolving YouTube viewership

Think back … can you remember the first time you heard about YouTube? Or even better–can you recall the first video you watched? It’s a fun parlor game we YouTubers sometimes play–and an occasion to reflect on how far the platform has come since its earliest days.

And for those of us who have been on the ads team for more than a few years, it’s particularly remarkable to think about how our ad products have changed as well. Back when we introduced TrueView 9 years ago, people entered the site typically from a link and typically on desktop, watched a short form video and then left to do other things. In fact, desktop represented 90 percent of all YouTube usage in 2010. The appetite for in-stream ad experiences was extremely low in these contexts, which prompted us to introduce a skippable video format that put the choice to view an ad in the hands of the user. Advertisers only paid if viewers watched the complete ad or 30 seconds if longer, so it was a win-win.

In the years since then, YouTube has grown to accommodate not only diverse content types and audiences, but also a new diversity of viewing patterns. In 2016, mobile viewing eclipsed desktop, and in 2019 TVs are our fastest growing screen. Today, viewers may just as readily binge six or seven short videos on their mobile phone, before they switch on YouTube on their TV and watch several hours of longer form video.

In short, YouTube viewing has evolved to serve seemingly divergent consumer mindsets – active browsing sessions where they discover new content and more longer, more leaned-back sessions. This has required a reconsideration of how we serve ads in each of these varied contexts.

Our mission as an ads team is to build the right ad experience for each of these contexts – from active discovery through to more leaned-back sessions:

Ad innovations to match viewer modes

The changing ways people watch YouTube also means that a view has different value in different contexts. This is why we continue to develop additional metrics beyond views and view-through rate–like Brand Lift, or direct actions and conversions – to quantify ad impact, while also developing new ad formats that are matched to viewing patterns and advertiser goals. While we work on these new ad experiences, our priority is to align pricing with anticipated advertiser value.

This led us to introduce Smart Pricing over a year ago, which aligns media costs with anticipated value of a given context. For example, if we know a user is watching content in a longer, TV-style session – we will price those ad impressions according to what our effectiveness models indicate is the typical value of that type of viewing mode. Smart Pricing delivers better results for advertisers – at launch we saw:

• More efficient awareness—5 percent gain in brand awareness per dollar

• Higher ROI for advertisers – 7 percent gain in ad recall per dollar

Beyond Smart Pricing, we are also working on ways to align YouTube media directly to your marketing objectives, and delivering value as you measure it. For instance, with video reach campaigns, you can optimize for your reach and awareness goals more easily using multiple video creatives and formats within a single campaign. Google’s machine learning will automatically serve the most efficient combination of those formats to help you reach your audience at scale.

The variety of viewing contexts is an asset, as YouTube increasingly meets the needs of viewers looking for short form, long form, TV screen experiences, a go-anywhere music player, social video, highly produced traditional video and more. And the continued evolution of our ad experiences means brands will see a benefit from each viewing mode. We take pride in continuously evolving our platform based on changing user behavior and will continue to experiment with delivering advertiser value across a variety of user contexts. And we invite you, our trusted customers, to partner with us as we build an effective video ad system for the age of choice.

by Ali MillerYouTube Ads via The Keyword

A call for the next big ideas in news

This time last year, we launched the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge, part of our $300 million commitment to help journalism thrive in the digital age.  

With our first challenge, we funded23 projects focused on diversifying reader revenue in the Asia Pacific region. Since then, we’ve launched challenges in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Turkey, receiving more than 1,300 project submissions from 77 countries--and recently selected 64 more projects for funding. 

Today, we’re opening our second challenge in Asia Pacific. This time, we’re calling for projects which aim to increase reader engagement. The more deeply people engage with the stories they read, the more likely they are to return to a news website, visit more pages during a session, sign up for an email newsletter and become subscribers.  

We’re interested in hearing about creative ideas around reader engagement, including but not limited to personalization, analytics, audio and loyalty programs. And the Innovation Challenge is open to organizations of every size--startups, NGOs, broadcasters, traditional news publishers and freelancers--so long as they can clearly show the impact of the project from a reader’s perspective, and deliver it within a year. 

The application window for project submissions is open until January 7, 2020, and you can read more about the eligibility, rules and criteria and funding at the Google News Initiative website or at a town hall on November 13. 

To find out more about the results of the first round of funding, we spoke to Disha Mullick of Khabar Lahariya, who has created a new subscription model around a video series about young people in rural India.

How did you develop this subscription model?

We initially talked about aiming the subscription model at our primary, rural audience. The dream is for this audience to become our strongest, most loyal subscribers. But discussions internally with the Google News Initiative and with our peers in digital media pushed us to test the idea with our urban, English-speaking audience first. 

Our vision is to take hyper-local content and voices to a broader audience through immersive video storytelling. Embedded reporters would help link these local stories to global shifts in gender and power, technology, environmental change and financial instability. If this platform works, we’ll adapt it to other audiences who may take longer to come around to the idea of paying for content. 

What is the long-term plan for growing your subscriber base?      

We plan to create a model that combines the features of a membership model and a digital subscription or paywall--one that’s inclusive of both rural and urban audiences willing to pay for good quality, hyper-local content. We also hope to be able to provide other features, like workshops and fellowships, travel opportunities—perhaps even access to small grants for media or other entrepreneurial projects. 

What advice would you offer the next group of reporters looking to increase reader engagement?  

I can't over-emphasize the impact of investing in local content. Even if that's not what gets monetized easily, it’s what builds trust and credibility, which have been shaken by the amount of misinformation floating about. I also think the way we engage readers needs to be responsible, to counter the state's imperative to control social media or the flow of information on the internet--which may be knee-jerk reactions to the violence and abuse we see. 

by Irene Jay Liu via The Keyword

Top tips for keeping data safe and secure on Android

Keeping data safe and private is a key priority for Android—and we’ve built a number of features to keep your device secure and give you control. As part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, here are a few of these features, and our top tips for staying safe on your phone.

Warding off sneaky phishing attacks

Phishing is when a bad actor (we’re talking criminal here, not someone with low-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes) tricks you into giving them your private information. Phishing can come in the form of a convincing email that looks like it’s from a company or co-worker you know, spam phone calls, and even text messages. 

Typically, these bad actors want to steal credit card numbers, social security numbers, or account login information (usually for financial gain or identity theft), but there may be other pieces of data they’re looking to steal.

Thankfully, you have three important features on your Android device that protect them from phishing:

• Caller ID & Spam Protection: This shows you when a call you’re receiving may be coming from a suspected spammer.
• Safe Browsing: This Chrome feature lets you know if you stumble across a website we know to be bad, and will help you quickly get to safety.
• Phone-as-a-Security-Key: While other forms of on-device two-factor authentication, such as SMS one-time codes and push notifications, can be phished by a remote attacker, Android's built-in security key gives you the strongest form of Google account protection. 

Privacy controls you can depend on

Video explaining Android permissions and privacy controls.

How to protect your privacy with Android

On mobile devices, apps can access a lot of pertinent information such as contacts, web histories, location, photos, and more. This makes apps more useful—for example, helping you navigate to a desired destination in Maps—but you still want to make sure that you control who sees what. 

You can choose how their data is shared with apps and services through a number of different means:

• Permissions: Apps have to ask you for permission to access certain types of data, like your photos or contacts. To grant or revoke permission, head to Settings > Privacy, if you are using Android 10. For Android Pie and below, head to Settings > Apps & notifications > Advanced > App Permissions.  
• Location permissions: You can tell an app that it may only access your location when you’re actually using that app, as opposed to “all the time” or “never.”
• Incognito mode in Google Maps: When you turn on Incognito mode in Maps, your Maps activity on that device, like the places you search for, won’t be saved to your Google Account and won’t be used to personalize your Maps experience.

Keeping bad apps off your device

Bad actors also use potentially harmful applications to steal information. Google Play Protect makes sure these applications stay off your device by automatically scanning your apps to make sure everything is safe. If you do encounter one of these bad apps, Google Play Protect will quickly alert you and instruct you on how to remove the app from your device. 

You can access Google Play Protect by going to the security section of your settings. If you ever want to run a scan manually, you can prompt it to do so there. When it comes to security and privacy on Android, you’re never alone. You have both the underlying, automatic protections and the personalized control you need to keep your information safe and private. Want to learn more? Visit our Security Center today. 

by Dave Kleidermacher via The Keyword

Get your products in front of holiday shoppers

In three weeks, consumers will have their devices in hand and be ready to line up at stores to continue their holiday shopping over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Will you be ready? We’ve made a list of recommendations and hope you’ll check it twice to help you dial up holiday performance. See our first pro tip below and check back next week for what’s next on the list.

Pro tip #1: Help shoppers discover more of your products through Merchant Center

The holiday season continues to be an important time for retail marketers and is growing more competitive every year. According to Mastercard Advisors, retail had its largest season ever ($853 billion) last year with ecommerce sales reaching their strongest growth in over a decade, at an 18.4 percent increase from the year before.

And while this year’s holiday shopping season is a week shorter than last year, there’s good news for marketers: research shows the period to influence shoppers starts earlier and extends longer than ever. 

To help you reach these eager shoppers, we’re introducing new features in Merchant Center to help you promote and sell your products this holiday season:

• Expand your feeds to show on Shopping ads in 50+ new markets

• Quickly upload your products globally through automated feeds

• Strengthen your reviews with user-generated images for Product Ratings

• Easily manage your inventory with the new Merchant Center experience and automatic image improvements

Reach more holiday shoppers around the world

70 percent of global consumers made at least one crossborder purchase according to a recent Pitney Bowes report. Promote the products you sell and find better qualified leads by putting your products in front of people searching on Google around the world. With Shopping ads now available in more than 50 new markets, and 95 total markets, you can expand your global footprint more than ever.

Start showing your products globally with multi-country feeds, which allow you to target multiple countries that share the same language by using a single feed in that language. For example, if you upload product information in German for Germany, those products may be automatically available to show in other German-speaking countries, such as Austria and Switzerland. You’ll just need to set up shipping and location targeting for these countries in your Shopping campaign in order to start promoting your products in these new countries.

If you don’t already have a feed, you can submit your products more quickly with automated feeds, available in all Shopping ads countries starting in November. Simply enable Merchant Center to crawl your website for structured data and extract your most up-to-date product information for your initial feed. 

Turn browsers into buyers with more visual reviews

A recent Google/Ipsos study shows that Google is the first place consumers go to research a purchase they plan to make. But beyond turning to search to read product reviews, shoppers are increasingly becoming inspired by images, with 50 percent of digital shoppers saying images helped them decide what to buy, according to Google’s Consumer Survey this year. 

To help shoppers feel more confident in their purchases, we’re introducing user-generated images in product reviews on Shopping ads. You can now include review images in your product review feeds, allowing customers to visually connect with what you sell through pictures of previous customers wearing or using your products. 

To get started, see our updated schema documentation, and ensure all images you submit are compliant with our policies for user-generated images. You can sign up for the Product Ratings program here. This experience is currently available on mobile in the US, with plans to expand across more Google properties and countries over the coming months. 

Manage your inventory across Google more easily

The new Merchant Center experience has been redesigned with clearer workflows, simpler navigation, and more program insights. You can use the updated interface to easily manage your products, like enabling automatic image improvements to remove promotional overlays on your product images to comply with Merchant Center policies. You can also discover additional opportunities to promote and sell your products. 

For example, you can opt your inventory into surfaces across Google in the US and India to allow your products to show across Google for free, including rich snippets in search results and product annotations in Google images. Surfaces across Google will be coming to additional countries before the end of the year.

Ready to get started? Get more tips and best practices for driving holiday sales.

by Raphael Leiteritz via The Keyword

How we can help more American small businesses export

Technology has made it easier than ever before for small businesses to find new customers abroad. That’s been the experience for Ryan McFarland in South Dakota, who started Strider Bikes in 2007 after inventing a pedal-free bicycle for his young son. He’s since sold more than 2.5 million bikes to customers in 78 countries, and international sales account for over half of the company’s business. Through products and tools like Google Ads, YouTubeand Market Finder, small businesses like Strider Bikes are finding new markets and building relationships with customers around the world.

Still, we know that a majority of small businesses currently do not export their products, and many that do export continue to find it a difficult process. That’s where technology can come in -- helping small businesses access international markets that present great opportunity.

To better understand the opportunities and gaps for small businesses, we commissioned a study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Brunswick Research on small business exports. We wanted to dig deeper into the role small businesses play in U.S. export success, the challenges they face in exporting and the ways new technologies and policy approaches can support them. Their new report, “Growing Small Business Exports: How Technology Strengthens American Trade,” comes out today. 

Researchers surveyed more than 3,800 small businesses across the country to estimate the current and potential impact of small business exports on the U.S. economy. A few highlights: Small business exports support more than six million jobs across all 50 states, and add over $540 billion annually to the American economy. Still, there’s a huge opportunity for more small businesses to sell overseas. If policymakers and the business community can help small companies overcome some of the challenges of exporting—like language barriers, customs issues and payment challenges—we could create nearly 900,000 additional jobs in the U.S. 

Modernizing and updating trade policy is key to unlocking exports for small businesses. But better use of technology also plays a critical role. The survey found that the majority of non-exporting small businesses—more than 70 percent—aren’t familiar with digital tools that could help them reach global customers. Tools like translation services, digital marketing and advertising and online payment platforms can help small businesses reach beyond their local markets. 

Based on these findings, the report offers a few recommendations, including:

• Develop a collaborative initiative between the federal government, state governments, the private sector and others to train and assist U.S. small businesses in using technology for exporting. This approach would modernize export promotion tools while driving coordination between the numerous federal and state export agencies that have a stake in helping small businesses engage in trade. 
• Encourage innovators and technology providers to build new digital tools—and broaden awareness of existing tools—that address barriers facing small business exporters. Today, only 20 percent of small businesses use digital tools to export. By increasing awareness of these resources, we can set small businesses up for success.
  
• Building on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), policymakers should prioritize additional market-opening trade agreements that benefit small business exporters, including through high-standard rules in areas such as digital trade and the removal of non-tariff barriers that disproportionately affect small businesses.
  

At Google, small businesses have always been a top priority of ours. (In fact, the first company to sign up for our ads platform was a small business -- a mail-order lobster business from Maine!) By doing our part to lower barriers to exporting, we can help small businesses grow overseas and bring jobs and economic opportunities back to their communities. It’s crucial that policymakers across federal, state and local governments work with large and small businesses to meet this opportunity.

by Karan BhatiaGovernment Affairs & Public Policy via The Keyword

Tune into the radio with the Google Assistant and SiriusXM

Starting next week, you can stream SiriusXM’s extensive lineup of channels with the Google Assistant on your smart devices, like Nest Mini, Nest Hub, Android and iOS phones, and everywhere Assistant is available. 

With just your voice, you can pick from a wide selection of talk shows, commercial-free music, and sports stations from SiriusXM, which is great when your hands are full while getting ready for work or you’re cooking dinner with friends. Just say “Hey Google, play Howard 100 on SiriusXM” or play other channels, like “play Hits 1 on Sirius XM” and “play Fantasy Sports Radio on SiriusXM.” You can also select dedicated artist channels by asking “Hey Google, play The Beatles Channel on SiriusXM,” or try other channels, like “play Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud radio.” Or, just simply say “Hey Google, play SiriusXM” to listen to the last channel you played earlier. This will be available in the U.S. and Canada, starting in English and expanding to Canadian French soon.  

Eligible customers can get a 3-month free trial subscription for SiriusXM with any purchase of a Google Nest speaker or display when you set up your device on the Google Home App. And later this year, we’ll bring curated video content from SiriusXM to your Nest Hub or Nest Hub Max. You’ll get access to exclusive in-studio performances, interviews and more. 

There are also tens of thousands of stations that you can already play through your Assistant from providers like TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Radio.com. With your voice, you can switch between stations to jam with your favorite DJ, get updates about your home team, or catch up on the day's headlines. 

Here are a few ways to tune into the radio with the Assistant:

• Ask for your favorite station by its channel name or frequency—say something like, “Hey Google, play KGMZ” or “play 95.7.”

• Find the local NPR station by saying “Hey Google, play NPR” or even tune into international stations such as BBC Radio with the Assistant.

• The Assistant remembers your most recent station. Just say “Hey Google, turn on the radio” to drop back into the stream.

• When you're in the car, you can access the Assistant from your driving directions in Google Maps. Just say "Hey Google ..." and ask for your favorite station, so that you don't have to take your eyes off the road.

• Your favorite radio station will automatically play when you add it to your “good morning” or “I’m home” Routine, which allows you to get multiple things done with a single command from the Assistant. They’re easy to set up. 

You can easily tune into your favorite stations when you’re at home or on the go. Give these a try yourself. 

by Will via The Keyword

Vint Cerf’s top moments from 50 years of the Internet

Editor’s note: On the 50th anniversary of the Internet, this post comes from one of the most knowledgeable sources out there. Though it’s not included in his official title, Vint Cerf is, in fact, one of the architects of the modern Internet. 

Before there was the Internet, there was a packet. The “sending of the packet” was actually the first step toward the invention of the Internet as we know it, and it happened 50 years ago today. On that day, we established the first connection between two computers—from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute—on the ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet. 

Connecting the planet in this way remains one of the most astounding technical and societal achievements of our lifetime. A lot has happened in the years since, and the rise of the Internet has come with its own set of challenges that will require new solutions. But over the years there have been many bright spots, including 17 moments that, for me, stand out the most. 

1. October 29, 1969:The first packet was sent. This pioneered our understanding of operational packet switching technology, which prepared us for the subsequent development of the Internet. 

2. 1971: Networked electronic mail was created using file transfers as a mechanism to distribute messages to users on the Arpanet.  

3. 1974:The design of the Internet was released. Robert Kahn and I published “A protocol for packet network intercommunication.” In this paper we presented not only a protocol, but an architecture and philosophy that supported an open design for the sharing of resources that existed on different packet-switching networks. 

4. November 22, 1977:A major demonstration of the Internet took place, linking three networks: Packet Radio, Packet Satellite and ARPANET. 

5. January 1, 1983:The Internet was operationally born, and I’ve used an “electronic postcard” analogy to explain how it works.

6. 1983:The operational mobile phone arrived, which is crucial because, although the Internet and mobile phones were developed in parallel, they eventually proved to be complementary technologies.

7. 1984: Cisco Systems was founded, and with it came the arrival of commercial routers, which allowed the connection of disparate networks to share data between computers.  

8. 1988:I realized the Internet was going to be really big when I attended an INTEROP show and exhibition, and there was a two-story exhibit from Cisco Systems. Turns out they spent $250,000 on that exhibit—you don’t do that unless you think it’s worth the expense and will drive business. That’s what triggered my interest in making the Internet accessible to the public. 

9. December 1991:The invention of the World Wide Web introduced a new way of sharing information that had a profound impact on accessibility and utility. Its arrival illustrated how powerful the Internet could be for information discovery, access and sharing.

10. 1993:The release of the Mosaic browser to the general public was a stepping stone to the the web that we know today. It was the first time there was an interface that was visually appealing to a general audience. Also that year, the word “meme” was used to describe a viral idea—although it would take another decade or two to become mainstream. 

11. 1995: The IPO of Netscape Communications triggered a new era in technology and in business: the “Dot Com Boom.”

12. 1996: The arrival of voice over IP (Vocaltech), and the development of IPv6 allowed a superior cost benefit experience. 

13. 1998:The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created, which is still one of the most important institutions responsible for the technical aspects of Internet governance. That same year, Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google. 

14. April 23, 2005:The first YouTube video was uploaded, which meant that ordinary people—not just television studios and broadcasters—could create and upload shareable videos. Today I turn to YouTube for “how to” videos like cooking and fixing problems with software, and watching TED talks or science explanations.

15. 2007:The first smartphone marked a collision of two revolutionary technologies: the mobile phone, which made the Internet more accessible, and the Internet, which made the mobile phone more useful.

16. June 5, 2012:Google, as well as many other websites, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and network hardware manufacturers permanently switched on Internet Protocol v6 (IPv6) as part of the World IPv6 Launch. At the time, the Internet was running out of IP addresses, but IPv6 allowed for unlimited growth of IP addresses in the future. This was also the subject of my first tweet!

17. 2019-2069 (the next 50 years): In the next five decades I believe that computer communications will become completely natural. Like using electricity, you won’t think about it anymore. Access will be totally improved—think thousands of low Earth orbit satellites—and speeds will be higher, with 5G and optical fiber, and billions of networked devices with increased interactive capabilities in voice, gesture, and artificially intelligent systems. I also imagine an expansion of the Interplanetary Internet. But who knows, after everything that has been accomplished in the past 50 years, the only thing we can be certain about is that the possibilities are endless.  

by Vint Cerf via The Keyword

Investing in affordable and inclusive communities

Editor’s note: This guest post comes from Micaela Connery, Founder and CEO of The Kelsey.

My cousin Kelsey and I were born three months apart, going through every life milestone together. When it came time to live on our own, it took me several months to find housing—but it took Kelsey almost eight years. Her family struggled to find a home that was supportive of her disabilities, while still letting Kelsey be part of the broader community.

Kelsey and Micaela

It’s a challenge almost every adult with disabilities faces. Kelsey was one of the lucky ones, with supportive parents and good local resources. The reality is that over 70 percent of people with developmental disabilities never move from their family home. This challenge is particularly acute in lower income communities or communities of color.

Addressing this critical housing need for adults with disabilities can, and must, be done through inclusion in design, funding, policies and culture. The Kelsey creates and advocates for housing where people with and without disabilities live, play, and serve together. With a $5.3 million investment from Google, we're building our first community—The Kelsey Ayer Station—in San Jose, California.

The Kelsey Ayer Station will provide 115 homes to people of all abilities and all incomes. Our rent prices accommodate people with a range of incomes and 25 percent of the community is specifically reserved for people with disabilities. Developed in partnership with Sares Regis Group of Northern California, the entire space (including each unit) is designed to be accessible and inclusive to everyone. The site includes on-site features like a drop-off for accessible transit, sensory garden, and space for support staff. The building will have an Inclusion Concierge™, which means that two staff members will live in the community full time and connect residents to each other, the services and support they need, and the broader city around them. It will be a community where everyone—regardless of background, disability, identity, gender, age and race—can feel at home.

Google’s investment is part of its broader commitment to Bay Area housing. With it, we no longer have to worry about critical pre-development costs like purchasing and entitling our land and completing initial design work. At the same time, Google’s financing will help us focus on securing permanent financing and philanthropic support to complete the project. Google’s investment allows us to stick to our ambitious pace: residents will move into the space in four years, a timeline rarely seen in the housing industry. 

Less than 12 percent of adults with developmental disabilities own or rent their own home. But what people with disabilities want in housing isn’t particularly special or different. People want a place where they have privacy and independence, but also community where they feel safe without being constrained. People want a home they are proud of and can thrive in. Most importantly, housing for people with disabilities isn’t a problem to be solved “for them”—it’s an opportunity to create better designed, higher-quality, more connected communities for everyone.

The Kelsey Ayer Station will demonstrate what’s possible when people, funding, and cities come together with a shared commitment to inclusion. With help from companies like Google and cities like San Jose we’re well on our way and we’re confident that their support will attract others to step up to make inclusive community a reality. 

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Making technology accessible for everyone

To mark National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we’re sharing more about our efforts to make technology, and the world around us, more accessible.

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by Micaela Connery via The Keyword

10 shortcuts made possible by .new

Who doesn’t love finding a good shortcut? A year ago, G Suite created a handful of shortcuts: docs.new, sheets.new, and slides.new. You can easily pull up a new document, spreadsheet or presentation by typing those shortcuts into your address bar. 

This inspired Google Registry to release the .new domain extension as a way for people to perform online actions in one quick step. And now any company or organization can register its own .new domain to help people get things done faster, too. Here are some of our favorite shortcuts that you can use:

• Playlist.new: Create a new playlist to add songs on Spotify.

• Story.new: Write about what matters to you on Medium.

• Canva.new: Create beautiful designs with your team.

• Webex.new: For an easy, fast, and secure way to start your personal meeting room from any browser, try this shortcut from Cisco Webex.

• Link.new: Instantly create trusted, powerful, recognizable links that maximize the impact of every digital initiative using Bitly.

• Invoice.new: Create, customize and send customer invoices directly from the Stripe Dashboard. 

• Api.new: Prototype and launch your ideas for new Node.js API endpoints with this shortcut from RunKit.

• Coda.new: Simplify your team’s work with a new doc that combines documents and spreadsheets into a single canvas.

• Music.new: Create personalized song artwork for OVO Sound artist releases, pre-save upcoming music, and play the latest content with a single click.

• Cal.new: Create a new Google Calendar event right from your browser.

Similar to .app, .page, and .dev, .new will be secure because all domains will be served overHTTPS connections. Through January 14, 2020, trademark owners can register their trademarked .new domains. Starting December 2, 2019, anyone can apply for a .new domain during the Limited Registration Period. If you’ve got an idea for a .new domain, you can learn more about our policies and how to register at whats.new. 

With .new, you can help people take action faster. We hope to see .new shortcuts for all the things people frequently do online. 

by Ben Fried via The Keyword

13 shortcuts made possible by .new

Who doesn’t love finding a good shortcut? A year ago, G Suite created a handful of shortcuts: docs.new, sheets.new, and slides.new. You can easily pull up a new document, spreadsheet or presentation by typing those shortcuts into your address bar. 

This inspired Google Registry to release the .new domain extension as a way for people to perform online actions in one quick step. And now any company or organization can register its own .new domain to help people get things done faster, too. Here are some of our favorite shortcuts that you can use:

1. Playlist.new: Create a new playlist to add songs on Spotify.
2. Story.new: Write about what matters to you on Medium.
3. Sell.new: Help people get exactly what they want through eBay.
4. Canva.new: Create beautiful designs with your team.
5. Reservation.new: Make an OpenTable reservation at the best restaurants near you.
6. Word.new: With Microsoft, you can write with confidence, knowing intelligent technology can help with spelling, grammar and even stylistic writing suggestions.
7. Webex.new: For an easy, fast, and secure way to start your personal meeting room from any browser, try this shortcut from Cisco Webex.
8. Link.new: Instantly create trusted, powerful, recognizable links that maximize the impact of every digital initiative using Bitly.
9. Invoice.new: Create, customize and send customer invoices directly from the Stripe Dashboard. 
10. Api.new: Prototype and launch your ideas for new Node.js API endpoints with this shortcut from RunKit.
11. Coda.new: Simplify your team’s work with a new doc that combines documents and spreadsheets into a single canvas.
12. Music.new: Create personalized song artwork for OVO Sound artist releases, pre-save upcoming music, and play the latest content with a single click.
13. Repo.new: Developing fast? Open new GitHub repositories and gists in record time.

Similar to .app, .page, and .dev, .new will be secure because all domains will be served overHTTPS connections. Through January 14, 2020, trademark owners can register their trademarked .new domains. Starting December 2, 2019, anyone can apply for a .new domain during the Limited Registration Period. If you’ve got an idea for a .new domain, you can learn more about our policies and how to register at whats.new. 

With .new, you can help people take action faster. We hope to see .new shortcuts for all the things people frequently do online. 

by Ben Fried via The Keyword

Google Ad Manager 2019 Advanced TV Inventory Report

In the age of digital media, TV programmers need to monetize their content wherever audiences are watching—whether that's on a connected TV, laptop or smartphone. But there are still several unanswered questions and challenges around selling and distributing TV inventory across the full range of digital devices. 

Additionally, as programmatic’s share of advanced TV ad dollars continues to grow, programmers should begin to rethink their sales strategies to optimize their inventory offerings. Programmatic should no longer be thought of as a means to fill remnant TV inventory, but as a tool to ensure programmers are capturing the highest yield and revenue across all of their demand sources. 

In an effort to help our TV partners better understand the global and regional trends of selling and distributing TV inventory in the digital ecosystem, Google Ad Manager researched the performance of 44 of its top TV programmer partners across APAC, EMEA, LATAM, and North America, from Q4 2018 through Q1 2019. 

The results vary from region to region, but they all provide important insights TV programmers should be aware of as they move towards a programmatic future. For example:

• Connected TV has emerged as the leading digital device to watch TV content on in North America. While mobile is the leading device for the digital viewership of TV content globally.
• The majority of advanced TV ads shown on digital devices were sold via traditional reservations—direct deals transacted without automation. But programmatic direct and indirect deals are gaining momentum in several global regions. 
• TV programmers have an opportunity to take advantage of the automation, scale, and advanced functionality that programmatic platforms deliver. Programmatic Guaranteed has emerged as a leading programmatic deal type to efficiently transact TV media.
• We’ve uncovered four indicators (viewability, addressability, context, and protections) that have the largest impact on digital TV inventory demand and value. We explore what these signals are, how they are created, and the impact they have on programmatic sales.

This new chapter in TV history will present programmers with a challenge and an opportunity to redefine the way they manage and monetize their businesses. And while advanced TV is still relatively nascent, we believe programmers should start positioning themselves now to ensure long-term success later. 

To find out how to take advantage of the new opportunities advanced TV has to offer, download Google Ad Manager’s 2019 Advanced TV inventory report here.

by Justin BradburyGoogle Ad Manager via The Keyword

Boxing coach uses Live Transcribe to connect with at-risk youth

Editor’s note: Anya Karir is a Toronto-based youth boxing coach who uses Google’s accessibility tools to communicate with those around her.

Isolated and alienated. That’s how I’d describe the moment I realized I was deaf. That transition, from just a kid to a deaf person, is so clear in my memory—I was three years old, standing on my balcony on a warm New Delhi evening, watching people go by, and not hearing a sound. I wondered if I was the only deaf person on Earth. I had never met anyone like me.  

My parents sent me to a deaf school where the teachers only spoke Hindi. I noticed adults using large gestures to communicate with me, and in those early years we built a unique language to communicate to one another. When they would say "water" or "milk," they would make a closed fist with a thumb out (like giving a thumbs down), but in this case the thumbs down would be toward your mouth. 

When it was time to enroll into school, there was no sign language at the time, which made it difficult for me to connect or engage with the other students. That was my “deaf” moment—the moment that all those with accessibility challenges can relate to, where you realize that you are fundamentally different. 

We ended up moving to Canada where I learned American Sign Language. The ability to communicate more freely helped those feelings of isolation slowly fade away. And, today, I’m part of a strong community of deaf people that has helped me to learn, grow and shed the feeling of loneliness. 

While I’ve become more comfortable straddling the communities of both the deaf and those who can hear, there’s still friction when it comes to engaging with those who can’t sign, relying on my cochlear implant (a surgically-implanted device that provides a sense of sound with electric signals,) lip reading or cumbersome note taking. Thankfully, technology is helping to change that. A few months ago, I started to use Google’s accessibility app “Live Transcribe,” which basically provides real time captions when someone is speaking to you. I think of it as a super accurate and personalized note taker in your phone. 

Anya at the boxing gym

I’m a boxing coach for at-risk youth. Imagine you’re in a loud gym: thud, smack, laughter, doors opening and closing. It’s just you and a teenager, learning to communicate with each other: “Move your feet,” “improve your jab,” “take a quick break.” It would be tough enough to give and receive detailed instructions if you could hear, but bring in the loud noises interrupting conversation and it’s nearly impossible at times. In my case, Live Transcribe helps me listen to the kids in a noisy environment; it also detects ambient noises which gives me important situational context. Success in boxing is measured by one’s ability to give and receive punches and technology like this helps me truly engage in the ring so I can help these kids roll with the punches and rise to the top, inside and outside of the gym.

I look forward to seeing how technology will continue to build inclusion and nurture our community. It’s something my three-year-old self would have wanted, and something I’m excited that three year old’s of this generation will experience. 

by Anya Karir via The Keyword

Thanking all first responders

Growing up, my next door neighbor was a Boston firefighter. Like many kids, I was inspired by heroic portrayals of firefighters battling flames and carrying people to safety. What affected me most, however, was watching my neighbor leave his house every morning, prepared to help those in need. This dedication to helping others stuck with me.

It’s been twenty years since I first joined the fire department, and I’ve served as an on-call firefighter ever since. I’ve worked alongside EMTs, police officers, and community volunteers who on a daily basis are answering the call for help. While the newsworthy crises are part of the job, it’s also the less recognized, everyday moments—from replacing batteries in an elderly resident's smoke alarm to calming a child after an allergic reaction—that are essential elements of this work.

Today we’re recognizing our nation’s first responders for all the ways they dedicate their lives to helping others. A challenging, but often unrecognized, aspect of this work is the preparation required ahead of potential disasters. Therefore, Google.org is giving a $1 million grant to Team Rubiconto build out teams of volunteers, most of them military veterans, who will work alongside first responders to build out disaster preparedness operations.

Jake Wood, co-founder and CEO of Team Rubicon, explains the impact of this grant: "This funding enables us to build disaster preparedness in cities across the U.S. so we can mobilize to help others on their worst day. This includes everything from training in critical skill sets such as damage assessment, roof-tarping and chainsaw operations to incident command and leadership development—all so we can better serve our communities and neighbors affected by disaster."

Investing in preparedness is a key priority for Google.org as studies have shown that for every $1 spent on preparedness, approximately $6 are saved in the post-disaster recovery. Through this Team Rubicon grant and Google’s continued Crisis Responseefforts, we aim to support the work of first responders and the strength of their communities.

The work of Team Rubicon is close to my heart. Some of my closest friends and colleagues have been volunteering with them for many years and I’m grateful to be a part of supporting the incredible work they’re doing. Working within the first responder community has been one of the most meaningful aspects of my life. I continue to be inspired by the everyday selflessness of those I get the chance to work with. On behalf of Google, I want to say “thank you first responders for your daily dedication to help.”

by Gregg Silverio via The Keyword

Bringing Wi-Fi to the residents of Celilo Village

For the past seven years, I have spent time visiting students in rural communities across Washington State, where I live. I share information about science, engineering, technology and math, and specifically talk about software engineering and the projects Google has launched. It’s a true joy of mine to see students excited about technology, and see their young minds thinking about the possibilities ahead of them. 

When I visit students, I get to combine my experience as an engineer at Google, and as a member of the Google American Indian Network, to bring access to technology to those who may not otherwise have it. As an Elder and an Enrolled Member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Oregon, I was honored to take part in Google’s latest initiative to bring Wi-Fi and Chromebooks to Celilo Village, a Native American community on the Columbia River. This project will give residents and students the ability to access the abundance of information found online, and improve the digital divide between urban and rural communities.

The village has a historical significance to this part of the country, dating back over 11,000 years. Today, it’s home to nearly 100 Native Americans from many tribes, four of whom are the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Confederated Tribes of Yakama, Confederated Tribes of Umatilla and the Nez Perce Tribe. And until now, the 16 homes in the village had sporadic or no access to Wi-Fi.

Distributing Chromebooks to village residents in their renovated schoolhouse.

Thanks to a grant from Google, participation from the Google American Indian Network and collaboration with Dufur School, village residents and The Dalles Data Center, all homes now have access to Wi-Fi, and so do their schoolhouse and longhouse. Residents will have access to Chromebooks, and I put together a booklet with instructions on getting online and accessing Google apps.

Karen Whitford, a resident and Elder of Celilo Village, tries out the Google Daydream View VR headset.

The idea for the partnership came from Celilo Village resident Bobby Begay, who talked to the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center about funding connectivity for the village. The Discovery Center then worked with Googlers across the company to get the project started, including the Google American Indian Network. We celebrated this special gift with a community event in Celilo Village over the weekend, where we were joined by tribal leaders, policymakers and community members.

My fellow Googlers and I worked directly with the community to get this done, and we plan to keep our partnership going. “I’m excited to see the project come to fruition, but I think even more I’m excited at the opportunity to foster a longer-term relationship with residents of Celilo,” says my colleague Tria Bullard, one of the first Googlers to get involved with the project. We plan to provide more trainings and other computer science-related activities in the future. 

My hope is that with this new window into technology, Celilo Village will continue to grow and thrive for years to come. And who knows: Maybe kids growing up there will become part of the next generation of scientists and engineers.

by Suzanne DePoe via The Keyword

Supporting 34 local news projects across North America

From a 148-year-old newspaper to a startup monetizing audio archives, the successful recipients of the first Google News Initiative’s North America Innovation Challenge are as varied as the communities they serve.

These selected projects are from news providers in both rural and urban communities across the region, and are all dedicated to serving a diverse range of audiences. The thing that knits them all together is their passion for local news.

The North America Innovation Challenge was launched in May of this year, and was focused specifically on local news. Within six weeks of opening up this Innovation Challenge, we received 269 applications from 44 states and provinces. After a rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process, we selected 34 projects in 17 states and provinces to receive funding amounting to a total of $5.8 million.

The call for applications listed four criteria: impact, feasibility, innovation and inspiration. We were looking for applicants focused on generating revenue and/or increasing audience engagement for local news. The successful projects clearly answered this call. Here are just a few challenge winners:

• A veteran of the digital media industry, Ken Doctor will be testing a new approach to local news discovery, engagement and membership through the Lookout Local startup in Santa Cruz, CA.

• Graham Media Group will build a membership program to diversify broadcast revenues for local TV news stations in Detroit, Michigan.

• Canadian start-up Earbank will be helping local news providers access and monetize audio clips (Ontario, Canada).

• OkayPlayerin Brooklyn, New York will be creating an investigative reporting platform to further engage their African American audience.

• The Salt Lake Tribune aims to become the first U.S. legacy newspaper to transition to a community asset and operate as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a public board.  The project will develop a playbook to help others who are looking to do the same.

• The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism will be using text messages to take its solutions journalism to underserved audiences in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, where Wi-Fi access is low.

• La Noticia, the main news outlet for the Latino community in Charlotte, North Carolina, will be creating an open-source platform for its audience to be able to publish their own family notices.

You can read the full list of the successful recipients on our website. A second round of theNorth America Innovation Challenge will open for applications next year, and you can watch out for details on our website.

by Madhav ChinnappaGoogle News Initiative via The Keyword

Understanding searches better than ever before

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the 15 years working on Google Search, it’s that people’s curiosity is endless. We see billions of searches every day, and 15 percent of those queries are ones we haven’t seen before--so we’ve built ways to return results for queries we can’t anticipate.

When people like you or I come to Search, we aren’t always quite sure about the best way to formulate a query. We might not know the right words to use, or how to spell something, because often times, we come to Search looking to learn--we don’t necessarily have the knowledge to begin with. 

At its core, Search is about understanding language. It’s our job to figure out what you’re searching for and surface helpful information from the web, no matter how you spell or combine the words in your query. While we’ve continued to improve our language understanding capabilities over the years, we sometimes still don’t quite get it right, particularly with complex or conversational queries. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why people often use “keyword-ese,” typing strings of words that they think we’ll understand, but aren’t actually how they’d naturally ask a question. 

With the latest advancements from our research team in the science of language understanding--made possible by machine learning--we’re making a significant improvement to how we understand queries, representing the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search. 

Applying BERT models to Search
Last year, we introduced and open-sourced a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) pre-training called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or as we call it--BERT, for short. This technology enables anyone to train their own state-of-the-art question answering system. 

This breakthrough was the result of Google research on transformers: models that process words in relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. BERT models can therefore consider the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after it—particularly useful for understanding the intent behind search queries.

But it’s not just advancements in software that can make this possible: we needed new hardware too. Some of the models we can build with BERT are so complex that they push the limits of what we can do using traditional hardware, so for the first time we’re using the latest Cloud TPUsto serve search results and get you more relevant information quickly. 

Cracking your queries
So that’s a lot of technical details, but what does it all mean for you? Well, by applying BERT models to both ranking and featured snippets in Search, we’re able to do a much better job  helping you find useful information. In fact, when it comes to ranking results, BERT will help Search better understand one in 10 searches in the U.S. in English, and we’ll bring this to more languages and locales over time.

Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.

To launch these improvements, we did a lot of testing to ensure that the changes actually are more helpful. Here are some of the examples that showed up our evaluation process that demonstrate BERT’s ability to understand the intent behind your search.

Here’s a search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa.” The word “to” and its relationship to the other words in the query are particularly important to understanding the meaning. It’s about a Brazilian traveling to the U.S., and not the other way around. Previously, our algorithms wouldn't understand the importance of this connection, and we returned results about U.S. citizens traveling to Brazil. With BERT, Search is able to grasp this nuance and know that the very common word “to” actually matters a lot here, and we can provide a much more relevant result for this query.

Let’s look at another query: “do estheticians stand a lot at work.” Previously, our systems were taking an approach of matching keywords, matching the term “stand-alone” in the result with the word “stand” in the query. But that isn’t the right use of the word “stand” in context. Our BERT models, on the other hand, understand that “stand” is related to the concept of the physical demands of a job, and displays a more useful response.

Here are some other examples where BERT has helped us grasp the subtle nuances of language that computers don’t quite understand the way humans do.

• BERT in Search: Pharmacy Example

  With the BERT model, we can better understand that “for someone” is an important part of this query, whereas previously we missed the meaning, with general results about filling prescriptions.

• BERT in Search: Parking Example

  In the past, a query like this would confuse our systems--we placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb!

• BERT in Search: Book Example

  While the previous results page included a book in the “Young Adult” category, BERT can better understand that “adult” is being matched out of context, and pick out a more helpful result.

Improving Search in more languages
We’re also applying BERT to make Search better for people across the world. A powerful characteristic of these systems is that they can take learnings from one language and apply them to others. So we can take models that learn from improvements in English (a language where the vast majority of web content exists) and apply them to other languages. This helps us better return relevant results in the many languages that Search is offered in.

For featured snippets, we’re using a BERT model to improve featured snippets in the two dozen countries where this feature is available, and seeing significant improvements in languages like Korean, Hindi and Portuguese.

Search is not a solved problem
No matter what you’re looking for, or what language you speak, we hope you’re able to let go of some of your keyword-ese and search in a way that feels natural for you. But you’ll still stump Google from time to time. Even with BERT, we don’t always get it right. If you search for “what state is south of Nebraska,” BERT’s best guess is a community called “South Nebraska.” (If you've got a feeling it's not in Kansas, you're right.)

Language understanding remains an ongoing challenge, and it keeps us motivated to continue to improve Search. We’re always getting better and working to find the meaning in-- and most helpful information for-- every query you send our way.

by Pandu NayakSearch via The Keyword

Digital-first advertising solutions for TV programmers

The TV industry is going through a digital transformation as viewers watch more content in their living room on over-the-top (OTT) and streaming services. In fact, in the first half of this year, we saw connected TVs become the leading device in North America for Ad Manager programmer partners.¹ As TV converges with digital, we’ve been developing new advanced TV solutions that combine the flexibility and precision of digital with the scale and control of TV to help innovative media companies like Disney, Univision, and many more deliver seamless, personalized, and measurable ads. Today we’re adding new features to our advanced TV solutions for programmers including inventory sharing, ad break templates, TV forecasting and pacing, and real-time reporting.

Seamless ad experiences between programmers and distributors with inventory sharing

Programmers often have complex inventory sharing agreements with many content distributors, including traditional TV operators and digital distribution partners like virtual multi-channel video programming distributors (vMVPD) and OTT services, in which they share a portion of their ad inventory. To help remove some complexity, Ad Manager has launched a new inventory sharing feature that allows programmers and distributors to configure flexible inventory sharing rules in an easy-to-use workflow. Partners are now able to manage rules—like category exclusions, frequency caps, or yield management—across different inventory shares even when a distributor is using a different ad server from their programming partner. By bringing the automation of digital to traditional inventory sharing agreements, partners can deliver seamless ad experiences in all the places their content is available.

Personalized ad experiences with ad break templates

Ad Manager’s Smarter Ad Breaks suite offers partners the ability to deliver personalized ad experiences to viewers, while maximizing revenue and yield across both reservation and programmatic ads. We’re enhancing this product suite with the launch of Ad Break Templates which brings more TV-like control with digital flexibility to every commercial break. Ad Break Templates allow partners to craft a truly customized ad experience with an easy drag-and-drop functionality where they can specify the order, length, and type of ad spot in each commercial break for both live and on-demand content. Whether starting with a sponsorship ad, ending with a bumper ad, or designating a specific spot where a programmatic ad appears, Ad Break Templates give publishers the control they need for their commercial breaks. These templates can also be applied to future commercial breaks once they see what’s working best.

Our Smarter Ad Breaks suite is not only making it easier for partners to customize their commercial breaks, but also to increase revenue. Partners using Smarter Ad Breaks have seen over 50 percent revenue uplift compared to video ads served in a traditional manner.² 

Measurable ad experiences with TV forecasting and real-time reporting

Live events like sports have become especially popular in streaming environments because they allow viewers to watch anywhere, but they can be challenging to monetize due to unpredictable viewership spikes. Ad Manager's TV forecasting now makes it possible for partners to accurately pace their TV inventory according to historical data and custom curves. Partners can fine tune their forecasts to account for peaks and valleys of season premieres, finales, live events, and everything in-between. This means sports streaming companies can more precisely pace ads in their live college football games ahead of time, so that they're not over or under sold, and can earn the most money from every commercial break. 

Building on our TV forecasting capabilities, Ad Manager’s new real-time reporting feature allows programmers to validate that their campaigns are running as expected during an event. Live events are known for having a large amount of high-valued inventory available to fill in a short period of time, and any delivery issues can result in substantial missed ad opportunities. Real-time reporting provides partners a way to quickly identify and fix ad delivery issues in real time across their live and on-demand content. So when the basketball playoffs or the big college football matchup are streaming, people continue to have a broadcast-quality viewing experience and partners can continue to grow revenue. 

These features are only the beginning of a truly converged TV and digital future. As we look ahead, we’ll continue to see our TV programming partners leverage more digital benefits, like the ability to use programmatic guaranteed to complement their TV sales and upfronts. And we’ll be focused on continuing to develop more digital-first ad features made for TV that empower our partners, today and in the future. 

^1. Google Ad Manager, Ad Exchange, internal data, Q4 2018 - Q1 2019.

^2. Google Ad Manager, internal data, March 2018

by Peentoo PatelGoogle Ad Manager via The Keyword

MediaWise helps millions discern fact and fiction online

Nothing marks the passage of time quite like the changing pace of technology. When I was in high school nearly ten years ago, I didn’t have a smartphone, and there was no Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok. I didn’t have to navigate the world of misinformation the way teens have to today which is something that I can appreciate now that I work for MediaWise. Our goal is to teach one million teens by 2020—with half coming from underserved and low-income communities—the difference between fact and fiction online. 

MediaWise is made possible by the Google News Initiative and is a Google.orgfunded partnership between The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the Stanford History Education Group, theLocal Media Association and the National Association for Media Literacy Education. As we mark Media Literacy Week in the U.S., MediaWise has surpassed our goal, and we have reached five million people. We’ve been able to hit that number thanks to social media, our MediaWise ambassadors and in-person trainings at schools across the country, and to date we have visited more than 50 schools in 19 states. 

But the part of the MediaWise program I’m most excited about is the Teen Fact Check Network, where I’m recruiting and training our next batch of teens to debunk misinformation by fact checking the internet. Our teens have fact-checked roughly 250 claims they’ve found on social media, covering issues they care about, like climate change, gaming and space exploration. 

For example, 16-year-old Victoria Foltz recently tackled a story about e-cigarettes after coming across an Instagram post claiming a company was sued for selling “coal-flavored pods to miners.” Here, Foltz gives some tips on how to spot satire.

And Kieran Stenson, also 16, looked into another Instagram claim about Queen Elizabeth II, which said she served as a mechanic and driver in World War II. This claim turned out to be legit.

Our fact-checkers are extremely talented, but even the brightest teenagers still struggle with figuring out what’s real and what’s not on the internet. While editing the work of these teen fact checkers, I’m often asking them, “who is behind the information?” Plus, I teach them skills like lateral reading and reverse image search so they can get to the truth of an online story.   

These teens navigating the constant onslaught of online information are growing up in a very different world than the one I grew up in, and I’m truly grateful they’re playing a crucial part in raising the bar for us all. Yet every now and then they remind me that they’re still teenagers. In one training feedback survey, the suggestion from one student was simply, “GIVE CANDY.”  

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by Alexa VollandMediaWise via The Keyword