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In this post:  Rich Jones, who works in people operations at Google, is the host of a personal finance podcast called "Paychecks & Balances." He hopes his show can help people learn from his mistakes — and now he's helping others start podcasts, too. Several years ago, Rich Jones was on the hunt for personal finance podcasts. But none were right for him. “It felt like every podcast that I listened to either made me feel dumb, or made me feel like I was being lectured by an old white guy in a suit,” he says. “Or it just was really boring.” So he decided to create his own.  These days, his podcast, “ Paychecks & Balances ,” has been downloaded more than two million times and recently won an award from the Plutus Foundation , which highlights excellence in financial media. He often records episodes from his Mountain View home in the early-morning hours, then logs on for his job working in People Operations at Google.  For years, Rich has turned to the inte...

Melonie Parker graduating from Hampton University, a historically Black research university in Hampton, Virginia. We have a responsibility to not only increase representation of our workforce, but also work with higher education institutions to provide access and opportunities for underrepresented groups in the tech industry. As Google’s Chief Diversity Officer, it gives me great pride to continue our long-standing partnership with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUS) in order to achieve these goals. For example, this year, we expanded our Grow with Google Career Readiness Program to 20 schools, and in our recent Tech Exchange cohort, 95% of students rated their overall experience as positive. We’ve also reached more than 4,000 students through our Google in Residence program. I’m proud that we’ve hired hundreds of students from HBCUs as a part of these joint efforts with our HBCU partners. Now, we’re deepening our partnership with HBCUs with a new “Pathwa...

Editor’s note: Welcome to A Matter of Impact, Google.org’s monthly digest, where we highlight what the team’s been up to and spotlight some of the incredible nonprofits and Google.org Fellows helping solve some of society’s biggest challenges through technology and innovation.  It didn’t take long for the effects of COVID-19 to reveal a devastating, but predictable, truth: the pandemic has had an outsized impact on marginalized groups, especially people of color. At Google.org, we aim to bring the best of Google to support underserved communities. So when we made a $100 million  grant and 50,000 pro bono hour commitment to support COVID-19 relief, we focused our efforts on addressing the compounding racial and social inequities of this crisis.  As we join forces to fight this pandemic, we must put equity at the center of our response and lift up our most vulnerable communities. Here you’ll find updates about our work that’s at the intersection of COVID-19 relief ...

Radio reaches more Americans every week than any other platform. Public radio stations in the United States have over 3,000 local journalists and each day they create audio news reports about the communities they serve. But news audio is in a similar place as newspaper articles were in the 1990s: hard to find, and difficult to sort by topic, source, relevance or recency. News audio can not delay in improving its discoverability.  KQED is the most listened to public radio station in the United States, and one of the largest news organizations in the Bay Area. In partnership with Google, KQED and KUNGFU.AI , an AI services provider and leader in applied machine learning, ran a series of tests on KQED’s audio to determine how we might reduce the errors and time to publish our news audio transcripts, and ultimately, make radio news audio more findable.  “One of the pillars of the Google New Initiative is incubating new approaches to difficult problems,” said David Stoller, Pa...

Welcome to the latest edition of “My Path to Google,” where we talk to Googlers, interns and alumni about how they got to Google, what their roles are like and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews. Today’s post is all about Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, the Global Director of Google for Startups . She shares what it was like to first join the company as Country Manager for Google Poland and eventually move to a new team focused on supporting startups in the region and around the world. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? I’m Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, but please call me Agni. During my first 11 years at Google, I first managed a sales team for a few years before going on to serve as the Country Manager. Later, I was promoted to Country Director for Poland, a position I held for nearly six years. Then, I led Google for Startups in the region as the Head of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) prior to my current role as the Global Director of Google for Startups. I lik...

Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Evan Landis, Chief Product Officer with VaxCare. The company aims to simplify vaccination for healthcare providers. VaxCare partnered with Social Mobile to create custom devices managed with Android Enterprise for its customers.  The intense worldwide effort to vaccinate against COVID-19 has highlighted some of the core challenges that have always existed in expanding protections against preventable diseases.   At VaxCare, our mission for more than 10 years has been to simplify vaccination programs, easing the logistical barriers to increasing vaccination rates. Our digital platform is designed to help healthcare professionals modernize their vaccination programs, reduce costs and focus on their patients.  Android devices are central to this strategy. Recently, we partnered with Social Mobile who designed and built bespoke, Google Mobile Services -certified devices that interface with our digital platform. The flexibility of An...

Marcus Davis, owner of The Breakfast Klub. As a Black businessman and owner of The Breakfast Klub for nearly 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of things and overcome a breadth of adversity —  from the 2007 recession and Hurricane Harvey to, most recently, the snowstorms in Texas and the pandemic. It should come as a surprise to no one that 2020 dealt an entirely new set of challenges. Challenges that, unfortunately, have affected the Black community disproportionately.  Through said challenges, we’ve also heard a rallying cry. Many Americans have come together to lift us up and support our businesses. As we continue to reflect, teach, learn and grow together throughout 2021, I am offering three easy steps you can take to help support the Black-owned businesses in your community beyond the end of Black History Month: 1. Be intentional  The best tip I can share to help support Black-owned businesses in your community is to start with an open mindset. If the ...

Every year, approximately 40 million women undergo breast-cancer screening in the U.S. using a procedure called mammography. For some, this can be a nerve-wracking experience; many wait days or weeks before a radiologist can review their scan and provide initial screening results. Between 10 and 15 percent of women must return for a second visit and undergo more scans before receiving a final diagnostic assessment – drawing out the process further.  Together with Northwestern Medicine , Google Health is working on a new clinical research study to explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) models can help reduce the time to diagnosis, narrowing the assessment gap and improving the patient experience.  Women who choose to take part in the study may have their mammograms reviewed by an investigational AI model that flags scans for immediate review by a radiologist if they show a higher likelihood of breast cancer. If a radiologist determines that further imaging is requir...

For several years, governments around the world have been meeting at the OECD to reform the international corporate tax system. Not surprisingly, success hasn’t come quickly. This isn’t an easy task – but it remains a critical one. As the world economy seeks to recover from the global pandemic and governments face new fiscal pressures, an agreed solution is needed now more than ever to ensure a durable framework for cross-border trade and investment. Tomorrow’s meeting of G20 finance ministers represents an important opportunity to give this process new momentum. For the new Biden Administration, the meeting represents a chance to underscore its commitment to the OECD-led multilateral process and to fair, comprehensive, and coordinated changes to corporate tax policies. And it represents an equally important opportunity for finance ministers from France, the UK, India, Indonesia, and other leading economies to commit to end the headlong rush to discriminatory tax measures that w...

Nelson Mandela once described South Africa as the most beautiful place on earth, with its breathtaking scenery , wildlife safaris , active adventures , vibrant culture and friendly people. I’m thrilled to announce that, starting today, you can explore what makes the country so spectacular through our new online exhibition -- South Africa: an explorer’s paradise . Through over 500 high-resolution photographs and videos , 20 expertly-curated stories and 55 Street Views , you can join a safari to meet lions and elephants, or feel the rhythm of the cities and visit ancient geological sites. Step inside the oldest caves in the world and zoom into vast savannas, lush forests and sparkling oceans.    Here are four places to start: A lioness photographed on a night drive at the Kruger National Park, from the collection of South African Tourism Aerial view of Hole in the Wall in the Eastern Cape, from the collection of South African Tourism 1. Meet t...

Across Google and YouTube, we are always working to protect our users from harmful content, especially the kind of horrific, illegal content referred to as child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Since our earliest days, we’ve been committed to fighting online child sexual exploitation and abuse both on our platforms and in the broader online ecosystem. We have invested in the teams , tools, and resources to deter, remove, and report this kind of content, and to help other companies do so. But we know this issue cannot be solved by any one company alone, and we’re committed to tackling it with others in our industry and partners who are dedicated to protecting children around the world. Today, we’re sharing more information about our work, including new efforts to combat this abuse, and how we’re supporting organizations that are committed to protecting kids online. How we identify and remove CSAM We identify and report CSAM with a combination of specialized, trained teams of peop...

Last year, Google’s  Women Techmakers launched “Founded,” a podcast celebrating the real, honest stories of women leaders in the tech industry and their journeys to entrepreneurship. Now, we’re back with a second season that will follow six women in tech with a common goal: to build a successful business.  We’ll hear from women like Hana Hassan, who’s working to diversify tech companies’ hiring practices, and Laura Rodriguez O’Dwyer, CEO of a startup that’s demystifying certain parts of learning languages. Image shows a headshot of a woman with long brown hair and a black blazer smiling at the camera against a black background. Cristina De La Peña is the o-founder of Synapbox , a content-testing platform using AI to help brands better understand consumer engagement towards advertisements.  Image shows a woman with short curly pink hair smiling at the camera against a black background. Shelly Bell is the founder of Black Girl Ventures Foundation ...

Data has always been a vital tool in understanding and fighting disease — from Florence Nightingale ’s 1800s hand drawn illustrations that showed how poor sanitation contributed to preventable diseases to the first open source repository of data developed in response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa. When the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, data again became one of the most critical tools to combat the pandemic.  A group of researchers, who documented the initial outbreak, quickly joined forces and started collecting data that could help epidemiologists around the world model the trajectory of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The researchers came from University of Oxford, Tsinghua University, Northeastern University and Boston Children’s Hospital, among others.  However, their initial workflow was not designed for the exponential rise in cases. The researchers turned to Google.org for help. As part of Google’s $100 million contribution to COVID relie...

Last February we announced GameSnacks , a HTML5 gaming platform from Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental products. We launched GameSnacks to test whether lightweight, casual games would resonate with people who use the internet via low memory devices on 2G and 3G networks, especially in countries like India and Indonesia. Since then, millions of people from around the world have played our games. GameSnacks now has more than 100 games built by early game development partners. These games span multiple genres: classics (e.g. Chess ), racing games (e.g. Retro Drift ), puzzle games (e.g. Element Blocks ), and hypercasual games (e.g. Cake Slice Ninja ) to list a few. You can check out the full catalog by visiting gamesnacks.com . Today, we’re sharing how we’ve broadened our efforts by bringing HTML5 games to Google products. We’re also inviting more game developers to join us as we grow the platform. Finding HTML5 games to play is hard When I mention HTML5 web gaming to...

It wasn't all that long ago that we introduced Android users to features like Emoji Kitchen and auto-narrated audiobooks. But we like to stay busy, so today we're highlighting six of the latest Google updates that will make Android phones more secure and convenient — for everyone. 1. Keep your accounts safe with Password Checkup on Android Password Checkup notification screen On Android, you can save passwords to your Google account, making it quicker and easier to sign into your apps and services using Autofill. Your login credentials are one of your first lines of defense against intruders, so we’ve integrated Password Checkup into devices running Android 9 and above. This feature lets you know if the password you used has been previously exposed and what to do about it. Now when you enter a password into an app on your phone using Autofill with Google, we’ll check those credentials against a list of known compromised passwords — that is, passwor...