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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Mohd Zaid, from Kajang, Malaysia, felt the pressure of providing for his family in an uncertain environment. To bring in some extra income, he turned first to one of his personal passions — making soy wax candles infused with scented oils — and then he turned to the internet. After learning digital marketing skills through a Grow with Google course, Zaid was able to go beyond word-of-mouth sales and promote his candles online through Google Ads and Search. His revenue jumped 70%. Zaid is one of a growing number of Malaysian entrepreneurs embracing a more digital economy. Technology has helped Malaysians through the economic effects of the pandemic, enabling people across the country to work, learn and run their businesses in new ways. According to the latest eConomy Southeast Asia report, 81% of all Malaysian internet users now use digital services — including three million people who’ve become new ‘digital consumers’ since the pandemic began. And bu...

Google has spent over twenty years helping to make information accessible and useful in more than 150 languages. And our work is definitely not done, because the internet changes so quickly. About 15% of searches we see are entirely new every day. And when it comes to other types of information beyond words, in many ways, technology hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Take one example: sign language. The task is daunting. There are as many sign languages as there are spoken languages around the world. That’s why, when we started exploring how we could better support sign language, we started small by researching and experimenting with what machine learning models could recognize. We also spoke with members of the Deaf community, as well as linguistic experts. We began combining several ML models to recognize sign language as a sum of its parts — going beyond just hands to include body gestures and facial expressions. After 14 months of testing with a databa...

This summer, we shared an update about how we’re continuing to improve video calling on Chromebooks, thanks to performance improvements across Google Meet, Zoom and more. And the camera on your Chromebook is good for more than just video chatting. Hundreds of millions of images and videos have been captured using the Chromebook Camera app so far this year. Today, we’re sharing a few features that make your Chromebook’s camera even more useful. Scan documents and more Have you ever wanted to use your Chromebook to share a physical document or image, but weren’t sure how without the help of a scanner? You can now use your Chromebook’s built-in camera to scan any document and turn it into a PDF or JPEG file. If your Chromebook comes with a front and back facing camera, you can use either of these to scan. Open the Camera app and select “Scan” mode. When you hold out the document you want to scan in front of the camera, the edges will be automatically detected. Once it’s done, ...

Images can be an integral part of many people’s online experiences. We rely on them to help bring news stories to life, see what our family and friends are up to, or help us decide which couch to buy. However, for 338 million people who are blind or have moderate to severe vision impairment, knowing what's in a web image that isn’t properly labeled can be a challenge. Screen reader technology relies on the efforts of content creators and developers who manually label images in order to make them accessible through spoken feedback or braille. Yet, billions of web images remain unlabelled, rendering them inaccessible for these users. To help close this gap, the Chrome Accessibility and Google Research teams collaborated on developing a feature that automatically describes unlabelled images using AI. This feature was first released in 2019 supporting English only and was subsequently extended to five new languages in 2020 – French, German, Hindi, Italian and Spanish. Tod...

If you make online video content, you’ve probably heard of VidCon , an event where creators, brands, industry experts and fans from around the world converge to celebrate the latest and greatest in digital media. The next VidCon takes place December 3-6 in Abu Dhabi featuring panel discussions, meet and greets and performances with some of the world’s most influential video content creators. Google for Creators will speak at two sessions at VidCon Abu Dhabi, both of which will focus on helping creators build their brands and monetize their content. On December 3, Head of Creator Relations at Google Paul Bakaus and cosplay designer Yaya Han will discuss how creators can have more control over their futures and businesses . Later that day, Google for Creators writer Crystal Lambert and creator Kaya Marriott will speak at Get the Most from Your Post — How to Create Powerful and Efficient Content Bundles . On the Google for Creators team, Crystal writes the educational guides for Creat...

This May at Google I/O 2021, we shared our vision for Project Starline , a technology project that combines advances in hardware and software to enable friends, families and coworkers to feel together, even when they're cities (or countries) apart. Project Starline is the culmination of advances we've made across 3D imaging, real-time compression, spatial audio and our breakthrough light field display system that, when combined, enables a sense of depth and realism that feels like in-person communication. We recently described some of these advancements in a technical paper, Project Starline: A high-fidelity telepresence system , which we're honored to have had accepted for publication at SIGGRAPH Asia. As we’ve started expanding Project Starline’s availability in more Google offices around the United States, we’ve been encouraged by the promising feedback. Google employees have spent thousands of hours using Project Starline to onboard, interview and meet new teammates...

Pictured left to right: Natalia Villalobos, Omoju Miller, Laura Markell and Kat Kuan In 2015, Developer Advocate Kat Kuan and I took a walk around the marshlands of Google’s Mountain View campus. We asked ourselves, “Why aren’t there more people of diverse backgrounds building apps for Android?” We noticed that the Android training content offered at the time assumed an intermediate level of programming experience, and decided to challenge that assumption. Was it possible to learn Android without any programming experience? We set out to create a learning path that would enable anyone to become an Android developer, and this remains one of the main priorities for Android’s training content. As a team of four women at Google with different backgrounds and experiences, we envisioned what this learning process could entail and conducted early user testing to make sure student needs were met. In partnership with Udacity, we co-developed a curriculum for Android beginners. We focused on...

Quantum computers will allow us to do hard computations and help us rethink our understanding of the fundamentals of science. That’s because quantum computers harness the power of quantum mechanics — a subfield in physics that explains how the natural world around us works at the subatomic level. While we are a long ways off from building a useful quantum computer, our team at Google Quantum AI is already running novel experiments on the quantum processors we have today. One particular experiment that was just published in the science journal Nature is our work on a new phase of matter called a time crystal. For years, scientists have theorized about the possibility of a time crystal and wondered whether one could ever be observed. By using our quantum processor, Sycamore, we now know it’s possible. To answer some common questions about this phenomenon, Google Quantum AI research scientists Pedram Roushan and Kostyantyn Kechedzhi answer the frequently asked questions. W...

Google News Showcase, a product and licensing program for news publishers, will begin rolling out in Portugal today as “Destaques Jornalísticos no Google” in Portuguese. Participating publishers from local, national and independent Portuguese outlets can give readers more insight into the topics they choose to highlight, through curated story panels which can appear on Google News and Discover. This is part of our global investment in news and reinforces our commitment to Portugal and journalism. With News Showcase (Destaques Jornalísticos), publishers can provide additional context about stories via curated panels, and add related articles, timelines and more. Publishers get more control of their presentation and branding, helping them be more visible to their dedicated readers and to those who are just discovering them. Google has signed partnerships with 28 Portuguese publications, including O Jornal Económico , Jornal de Notícias , Observador , O MIRANTE and Jornal do Fundão ...

Today, we announced the winners of Google Play’s Best of 2021 , a celebration of apps and games that made positive contributions to culture this year. And to encourage innovation across Google Play, we’ve expanded this year’s awards to apps and games on tablets, plus apps on Wear OS and Google TV. By challenging the norm, introducing unique gameplay features and giving users never-before-seen experiences, Google Play’s Best of winners represent what’s next in app and game development. Similar to our Best of 2020 winners , apps focused on personal growth were in high demand in 2021. This year’s winners found creative, and often meditative, ways to help users get to know themselves on a deeper level. Balance, which earned our Best App of 2021 award, encourages people to find their center through personalized meditations; Moonly provides tips and guidance based on the lunar calendar; and Laughscape helps people reach a meditative state through laughter. "We are deeply honored ...

For further background on this topic, please see our blog from June . Since we announced our Privacy Sandbox commitments earlier this year, we have continued to work with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to address feedback that was raised as part of its public consultation process. We have also continued to update and seek feedback from the market and the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on our proposals. We are determined to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox is developed in a way that works for the entire ecosystem and, as part of this process, we have now offered revised commitments, which can be found in full on the CMA’s website . These revisions underline our commitment to ensuring that the changes we make in Chrome will apply in the same way to Google’s ad tech products as to any third party, and that the Privacy Sandbox APIs will be designed, developed and implemented with regulatory oversight and input from the CMA and the ICO. We also suppo...

Having access to the right information matters. During a democratic election, it matters more than ever. High-quality information helps people make informed decisions when voting and counteracts abuse by bad actors. Through programs like security training for campaigns, information about polling places and transparency for political ads, Google is committed to helping support the integrity of democratic processes around the world. Political advertising is an important component of democratic elections — candidates use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. Over the last few years, Google has proactively increased transparency around election advertising: we updated our ads policies to require election advertisers to verify their identities and show who’s paying for an ad. We also introduced transparency reporting for online election ads in Europe as well as in the US and other countries around the world, providing a range of data that goes well bey...

PubCast is a podcast featuring the stories of website creators and app developers who turned their passions into profit with help from Google. In our second season of the series, you’ll hear from small business founders across the globe sharing how they launched their digital businesses and navigated challenges like the pandemic. Using AdSense, Ad Manager and AdMob to earn ad revenue, these businesses create free content, tools and resources that contribute to a thriving, open internet. You can listen to the miniseries on the Talks@Google podcast channel — just look for PubCast in the episode title — or anywhere you find podcasts. Check out our Season 2 episodes: Jessica Rovello | Building your favorite games and a thriving digital business : Jessica Rovello is the CEO and Co-Founder of Arkadium , a game development company that has built hundreds of games enjoyed on over 800 million devices worldwide. Arkadium has been voted one of Inc. Magazine's best places to work and...

The day Saya Hillman got fired from her last full-time job in 2004, she made two lists. One was of all the things she wished she could get paid to do, no matter how ridiculous. The other was a list of names, ones that gave her a “warm and fuzzy” feeling, for the company she decided she would start. And so Mac & Cheese Productions℠ was born — and lists would become a big part of its success. Saya had always made lists as a way to connect with people. She’d been sending emails to friends for a while, “really random lists of ‘here are things that I have found interesting,’” such as articles, tech gadgets and books. The feedback was great, and Saya realized it could be a great sales tactic for her new business. “I don’t have that used-car salesman, ‘buy me buy me’ feeling,” she says. “I’m just doing what I already love to do.’” Today Mac & Cheese Productions℠ offers a wide range of resources, events and content designed to connect people and help them live a Life of Yes℠, a c...

Editor’s Note from Ludovic Blecher, Head of Google News Initiative Innovation: The GNI Innovation Challenge program is designed to stimulate forward-thinking ideas for the news industry. The story below by Pascal Brouet, EBRA COO and Local Pulse Project Director, is part of an innovator series sharing inspiring stories and lessons from funded projects. When I took on the job of leading digital transformation for the French local daily newspaper group EBRA in 2018, print circulation was falling. The challenge for our future was revealed in our data — while circulation in the countryside was holding up, there was a sizable opportunity for expansion in metropolitan areas. And so our three-pronged internal project (at that time code-named “Local Pulse”) was conceived. Working with Google We applied for the Google News Initiative's DNI Fund , spelling out how we wanted to: (1) win back urban readers with a new editorial offering for each of the main cities covered by EBRA brands...

Editor’s note from Ludovic Blecher, Head of Google News Initiative Innovation: The GNI Innovation Challenge program is designed to stimulate forward-thinking ideas for the news industry. The story below by Miguel Paz, CEO and Founder of Reveniu , is part of an innovator series sharing inspiring stories and learnings from funded projects. “Do you believe me now?” is my favorite question. It’s the one I ask news organizations after they launch recurring payment programs for their audiences using Reveniu . When we look at the numbers from their first month using our tools, they see their revenues have doubled or sometimes even increased up to five times what they expected. These kinds of results drive our team’s work. And it’s personal for me. As a former journalist and newsroom editor, I know how difficult it can be to develop technical solutions. When you are a small organization focused on producing good journalism, you don’t have the time or resources to develop advanced tools...

When I was growing up, my Misho (my grandfather) was the chief of our tribe (Prairie Band Potawatomi) and would often tell my brother and me stories and tales sacred to our Indigenous history. When I was in second grade, I asked my Misho to come into my class to tell his stories for show and tell. I was immensely proud of him, and grateful for the opportunity to share my culture with my classmates. But after he left, my classmates started calling me names like “Pocahontas,” and war-whooping at me on the playground. After that, I didn’t mention my tribe or Native affiliation to classmates or colleagues again until I was in my 20s. Cheryl and her Misho When I got pregnant, I realized I wanted to reconnect with my culture. I wanted my son to know about the powerful, strong history of the Prairie Band Potawatomi, and about his family and my Misho. I threw myself into trying to learn the language, the history and our stories again. I bought my son children’s books written b...

COP26 wrapped up last week, and world leaders and industry experts headed home with commitments made to work together to further reduce emissions. You can learn more about Google’s commitments in this blog post. Even for climate negotiators, transparent and trustworthy data around emissions can be hard to come by. Historically, there has been a limited push to build the kind of data sets and models needed to create a shared fact base for everyone. So we asked ourselves: How can we help advocates, citizens, governments and businesses take action on climate, faster? We believe philanthropic dollars can play a critical role in creating important public goods, like transparent data sets and accessible digital tools, that might not otherwise exist. The world urgently needs a solid foundation of data and tools to monitor and verify our progress to make better decisions. That’s why much of our sustainability-related philanthropy is now focused on funding the creation and organization of d...

Women of color are doing incredible things online. They are creating educational and inspiring content, and making their marks as influencers in fashion and beauty, health and wellness, business, and more. They’re making a living building their brands and presenting their authentic selves . And they’re creating strong communities around their shared experiences. Today, on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, we’re launching The Conversation — a new YouTube series to share and celebrate the experiences of women of color creators. Each interview will feature a new woman of color creator talking about her background and journey, including her struggles and successes. Guests will share how they’ve built brands that resonate with others, and how they’ve turned their passions into full-time careers. They’ll also discuss how gender, race and culture have influenced their paths, the ups and downs of getting to where they are today, and what they hope to share with the world. No topic is off the ta...