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As families continue to face the new realities of juggling work, school, and play at home, online tools can make the adjustment a bit smoother. We’re all spending more of our time on our devices, and Google has many products and programs to help families create healthy digital habits and help them stay safe online. From internet safety resources to parental controls, our products help families find and manage quality content and apps, tools for distance learning and virtual field trips. And behind the scenes, our teams work every day to protect our users and make our products safer for everyone. Helping families and educators with distance learning resources  Families and educators are relying on digital platforms to provide access to online learning and educational tools during COVID-19. Our G Suite for Education tools can be used from any device and help more than 120 million teachers and students around the world work and learn together. To support distance learning, Go...

We're back with another update in our Stadia Savepoint series—here's what happened in May. This month, our community started playing Embr , Jotun: Valhalla Edition , Sundered: Eldritch Edition , DOOM 64, and many other games that arrived for purchase on the Stadia store. We also announced new games coming this year, including The Elder Scrolls Online on June 16th, PGA TOUR 2K21 on August 21st, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in Holiday 2020.  On June 3rd, we'll update our current Stadia Pro offer from two free months to one free month for new users. So if you haven’t already signed up, head over to Stadia.com before June 3rd to claim your two free months of Stadia Pro. Stadia Pro updates Get six new games for free with Stadia Pro in June: Get Packed, Little Nightmares, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, SUPERHOT, Panzer Dragoon Remake, and The Elder Scrolls Online (June 16). 12 existing games still available to add to your Stadia Pro collection: Destiny 2: The Co...

For the past several years, Pop-Up Magazine has resurrected extinct flowers, analyzed dreams, ventured into the Darien Gap, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and shared ancient songs from Istanbul’s Hagia Sofia—all from the comfort of theaters throughout the United States. Three times a year, the “live magazine” hits the road, featuring storytelling performed onstage by journalists, filmmakers, comedians, photographers and musicians, selling out every venue along the way. At every show, the hosts tell the audience the same thing: “After tonight, the show will disappear. You won’t find anything online. We made it just for you." But in recent months, the team behind the experience has had to rethink what it means to go on tour—and how they might bring their offline show online. Last night, in collaboration with Google, Pop-Up Magazine debuted its first digital show on its YouTube channel, free of charge and available around the world. We caught up with Chas Edwards, Pop-Up Magazi...

For many of us, it’s easy to take addresses for granted. We order products online, and they show up at our doorstep. In an emergency, we give our address to an ambulance or fire truck, and they quickly get to us. But what happens when you don’t have an address and you need to direct someone to your current location?  More than 2 billion people on the planet—about 25 percent of us or more —either don’t have an address or have an address that isn’t easy to locate. To tackle this challenge, we launched Plus Codes in 2015. Plus Codes are simple, easy to use digital addresses derived from latitude and longitude coordinates. They can be used to uniquely identify any location, from a rural home out on a prairie to a small shop stall on a nameless street. Today we’ve made it easier for anyone with an Android device to share their location using Plus Codes in Google Maps. People who use Google Maps might be familiar with the blue dot that represents their current location. Simply tap t...

In January, our CEO Sundar Pichai visited Brussels to talk about artificial intelligence and how Google could help people and businesses succeed in the digital age through partnership. Much has changed since then due to COVID-19, but one thing hasn’t—our commitment to the potential of partnership with Europe on AI, especially to tackle the pandemic and help people and the economy recover.  As part of that effort, we earlier today filed our response to the European Commission’s Consultation on Artificial Intelligence , giving our feedback on the Commission’s initial proposal for how to regulate and accelerate the adoption of AI.  Excellence, skills, trust Our filing applauds the Commission’s focus on building out the European “ecosystem of excellence.” European universities already boast renowned leaders in dozens of areas of AI research—Google partners with some of them via our machine learning research hubs in Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and London—and many of ...

The last few months have been an adventure for a lot of families like mine that are juggling work, parenting, and school at home. Our family Chromebook has been a huge help. Between video calls with teachers and classmates, virtual “field trips” to the zoo, moviemaking, and book publishing (and that’s just the last week!), my kids are spending more time online. With that comes some challenges, and I know I’m not alone. A lot of parents are looking for better tools to help them manage and guide their kids’ time spent online. We hope our new Chrome OS update can help. This update brings two new improvements to Family Link on Chromebook: access to Chrome Web store extensions for kids and per-app time limits for Google Play apps. Family Link is an app that helps parents set digital ground rules and manage screen time across kids’ Android phones, tablets, and Chromebooks. Parents can use the Family Link app from their phone to set restrictions on which websites their kids can visit, se...

I’m a big advocate of stepping away from my laptop and phone after work (I've even been that person who brags about their low screen time stats). But unsurprisingly, those numbers aren’t quite so low these days. Between working remotely, video calling my friends and family, scanning social media and the news, live-streaming fitness classes and definitely spending more time than usual binge-watching my favorite shows, my screen time is way, way (way) up. Sometimes, I’m relieved that I’m still able to do so much with my phone or laptop. Other times, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed and exhausted .  The reality is that technology is critical. But in trying to find a new sense of balance (or any balance at all), there are a few things we can do to alleviate some of these growing pains. And while I’m not a digital wellbeing expert, I’m lucky to work with a few. I asked some of Google’s experts if they had any advice for me and others who are looking to use technology a little more i...

COVID-19 has upended the news industry, hitting local news particularly hard with job losses, furloughs, cutbacks and even closure. To provide some help, last month the Google News Initiative launched the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund . Today we’re announcing that more than 5,300 small and medium local newsrooms around the world will receive funding ranging from $5,000 - $30,000. Applications covering a number of publications under one organization will be capped at $85,000. As we await a final funding tally, we expect to spend tens of millions of dollars through the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund.  In just two weeks we received more than 12,000 applications from 140 eligible countries, with 90 percent of those applications from newsrooms of less than 26 journalists. We reviewed each application against a set of criteria : publications operating locally, serving a specific geographic community and using the money to continue doing so. More than 300 Googlers joined forces to...

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), people reported $1.9 billion lost to scams in 2019. Every minute, more than $3,600 disappeared from wallets and bank accounts in response to made-up stories of urgently overdue tax payments, bogus contest winnings, or a smooth-talking online suitor who suddenly needs some gift cards. A high-pressure phone call or exciting message can overcome many people’s judgment, especially if they are caught  at a vulnerable moment. As the record-high scam reports keep coming, we’re providing support to the Cybercrime Support Network to help people identify scams before they fall victim to them through a new program called Scam Spotter , which simplifies expert advice with three golden rules. Remember to refer to these rules when you receive a suspicious phone call or message to figure out if it’s a scam: Slow it down: Are they telling you it’s urgent? Take your time and ask questions to avoid being rushed into a bad situation. Spot check...

Editor’s note: This post is authored by Daniel H. Gillison, Jr., CEO of The National Alliance on Mental Illness . Anxiety disorders affect 48 million adults in the U.S. Anxiety presents itself as a wide range of symptoms, and can be a result of biological factors or triggered by a change in environment or exposure to a stressful event. With COVID-19 introducing new points of stress, communities are seeing a rise in mental health issues and needs. New Census Bureau data released last week shows that a third of Americans are now showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization and we’re partnering with Google to provide access to mental health resources. Starting today when people in the U.S. search on Google for information about anxiety, we’ll provide access to a clinically-validated questionnaire called the GAD-7 (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7). The GAD-7 will show up ...

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On any given day, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) is tracking more than 270 targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more than 50 countries. Our team of analysts and security experts is focused on identifying and stopping issues like phishing campaigns , zero-day vulnerabilities and hacking against Google, our products and our users. Today, we’re sharing recent findings on government-backed phishing, threats and disinformation, as well as a new bulletin to share information about actions we take against accounts that we attribute to coordinated influence campaigns.  Hacking and phishing attempts  Last month, we sent 1,755 warnings to users whose accounts were targets of government-backed attackers.  Distribution of the targets of government-backed phishing attempts in April 2020 Generally, 2020 has been dominated by COVID-19. The pandemic has taken center stage in people’s everyday lives, in the international news media, and in t...

This bulletin includes coordinated influence operation campaigns terminated on our platforms in Q1 of 2020. It was last updated on May 27, 2020. January We terminated 3 YouTube channels as part of our ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Iran. The campaign was linked to the Iranian state-sponsored Iranian Union of Virtual Media (IUVM) network, and was reproducing IUVM content covering Iran’s strikes into Iraq and U.S. policy on oil. We received leads from Graphika that supported us in this investigation. February We terminated 1 advertising account and 82 YouTube channels as part of our actions against a coordinated influence operation linked to Egypt. The campaign was sharing political content in Arabic supportive of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain and critical of Iran and Qatar. We found evidence of this campaign being tied to the digital marketing firm New Waves based in Cairo. This campaign was consistent with similar finding...

Last year we introduced Discovery ads as a new way to help people discover and engage with your brand as they scroll through their favorite content. In April, we made Discovery ads generally available for all advertisers globally. For the first time, you can reach up to 2.9 billion people as they explore their interests and look for inspiration across multiple Google surfaces—all with a single, easy-to-use campaign. Reach more people as they browse their favorite feeds More consumers are now finding their next favorite brand or product through a growing variety of touchpoints—in fact, 86 percent of online consumers say they're on the lookout for shopping ideas as they watch videos or explore content across the web. With Discovery ads, you can rely on Google's understanding of consumers' intent across our properties to engage these audiences as they scroll through their favorite Google feeds—no search query needed: YouTube: Showcase your products on the Home a...

Editor’s note: May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Learn more about Google's mental health resources and tools.  A few years ago, Jenny Fandrianto noticed a sticker on a colleague’s laptop that read “ask me about Blue Dot.” So, she did.  She learned Blue Dot is a network of Googlers who simply listen to those who reach out to them. It's not therapy, and they don't tell anyone how to fix their problems. They just want to make it OK to talk about mental health. “Having that first conversation was really inspiring and energizing,” Jenny says. “I got to connect with someone and say ‘this is something that’s important to me, too.’”  Blue Dot’s mission to destigmatize conversations like the one Jenny had began in 2016, when it was founded by Rachael Bleakley and Jack Kaden (a Googler and a former Googler, respectively). Rachael had recently seen a news segment about a barber with a poster in his shop that read “Feeling down? Chat to us!” “He said it nearly always starte...

Running a business requires a whole lot of ingenuity and perseverance. It’s those same qualities that are helping local businesses adapt, and even thrive, in today’s new normal. To adjust, business owners are increasingly turning to digital tools. According to a newly released report by the Connected Commerce Council, nearly one in three small business owners said that without digital tools they would have had to close all or parts of their business. We’ve rolled out new features to help businesses get the support they need, adapt their operations, and quickly update customers about their latest changes. Let people know how they can help  We’ve seen firsthand in Google Search and Maps the impact that COVID-19 has had on small businesses and how they connect with their customers. People across the world are looking for ways to continue supporting corner bookstores, local watering holes, beloved dance studios and other businesses that give their neighborhoods character—even if ...