Monthly Archives: July 2019

Women Techmakers Summit Europe: Supporting Diversity & Inclusion in Tech

Posted By Franziska Hauck and Katharina Lindenthal , Google Developer Relations Europe

Once a year, we invite community organizers and influencers from developer groups that support diversity and inclusion in their local tech ecosystem to the Women Techmakers Summit Europe. The Women Techmakers Summit is designed to provide training opportunities, share best practices, show success stories and build meaningful relationships. The fourth edition of the WTM Summit in Europe took place in Warsaw, one of Europe’s most innovative tech and startup ecosystems.

Such positive energy! All 120 attendees of the WTM Summit Europe 2019Such positive energy! All 120 attendees of the WTM Summit Europe 2019

Expertise from the Community for the Community

The Women Techmakers Summit hosted 120 people, all women and men that are leading tech communities across Europe. With more than half of the sessions being delivered by community influencers, the group came together to share their best practices, learn from each other and discuss all things related to diversity & inclusion. “A fantastic opportunity to meet other community organizers across Europe and learn from each other.”

We also invited role models to draw inspiration and motivation from. Head of Google for Startups, Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, and Cloud Engineer, Ewa Maciaś, demonstrated that stepping out of our comfort zone is something we should do more and more. No one has the right answers from the start but by trying out new ways, we can carve our individual paths. Fear of failure is real. It should not keep us from experimenting, though.

Google’s Natalie Villalobos, head of the Women Techmakers program, and Emma Haruka Iwao, record breaker for calculating the most accurate value of Pi with Google Cloud, gave a glimpse into their personal stories. Their insights? Sometimes we need to go through hard times. They equipped us with the right mindset to push through, become your boss and succeed.

This left the attendees with the right motivation to get back to their communities: “This was my first WTM Summit, and it was an incredible experience. I met some amazing ladies and role models, and will be happy to share the inspiration I got with my local community.”

Googler Emma Haruka Iwao sharing her journey to break the world record for calculating the most accurate value of Pi Googler Emma Haruka Iwao sharing her journey to break the world record for calculating the most accurate value of Pi

Building the Basis for Diversity and Inclusion

“Being at the WTM Summit felt like being inside a family. I felt really included like at no conference before." To make everyone feel welcome, a code of conduct was visible for all attendees, and prayers and parents spaces were provided for all attendees. The itself needed to become the inspiration for community organizers and influencers to carry the learnings back to the communities.

Organizers working together to develop best practices to foster diversity and inclusion in their tech communities Organizers working together to develop best practices to foster diversity and inclusion in their tech communities

Women Techmakers: Changing the Narrative

One of the core elements of Women Techmakers is creating and providing community for women in tech. Women Techmakers Ambassadors thrive diversity and inclusion initiatives in their local tech community to help to bring more women into the industry. In Europe, more than 150 WTM Ambassadors from 25 countries support their local tech communities to close the gap between the number of women and men in the industry. Meetup organizers and community advocates who want to achieve parity can join the Women Techmakers program. As members, they are given the tools and opportunities to change the narrative.

If you are interested in joining the WTM Ambassadors Program, reach out to [email protected]

A new way to unify app and website measurement in Google Analytics

People expect to interact with businesses when and how they like, such as browsing a brand's website to research a product and then purchasing it later using the brand's app. Getting insight into these cross-platform journeys is critical for businesses to predict customer needs and provide great experiences—but it can be very challenging.

Currently, many businesses measure app engagement with Google Analytics for Firebase and website engagement with Google Analytics. While each of these products separately offer powerful insights, getting a more unified picture of engagement across your app and website can be a manual and painstaking process. 

To make this simpler, we’re announcing a new way to measure apps and websites together for the first time in Google Analytics.

Unified app and web analytics  

First, we’re introducing a new property type, App + Web, that allows you to combine app and web data for unified reporting and analysis.

Onboarding

 Measure your app and website together in Google Analytics

Reports for this new property use a single set of consistent metrics and dimensions, making it possible to see integrated reporting across app and web like never before. Now you can answer questions like: Which marketing channel is responsible for acquiring the most new users across your different platforms? How many total unique users do you have, regardless of which platform they use? How many conversions have occurred on your app and website in the last week—and which platform is driving most of these conversions?

User Overview

See combined metrics across your app and website

You can also go deeper to understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns across platforms. For example, you can see how many users started on your app then visited your website to make a purchase.

Flexible event measurement

Understanding how people engage with your app and website means that you need to measure a diverse range of user interactions like clicks, page views, app opens, and more. We’re making it easier to measure those actions on all of your platforms in a consistent way. The new property type utilizes a more flexible event-based model for collecting the unique interactions that users have with your content, allowing you to measure any custom event that you set up. 

This event-based model also allows you to automate the manual work of tagging some of the events on your site with no additional coding required. In addition to page views, enhanced measurement allows you to measure many common web events like scrolls, downloads, video views and more with the flip of a toggle in the admin settings for your property.

Enhanced measurement helps you measure events with the flip of a toggle

Enhanced measurement helps you measure events with the flip of a toggle

Cross-platform analysis

Given the many different ways people interact with your brand between app and web, you need flexible tools to make sense of your data and discover insights unique to your business. The new Analysis module enables you to examine your data in ways that are not limited by pre-defined reports.

There are a number of techniques you can use including: 

  • Exploration: Conduct ad-hoc analysis by dragging and dropping multiple variables—the different segments, dimensions, and metrics you use to measure your business—onto a canvas to see instant visualizations of yourdata.

The Exploration technique allows you to visualize your data with drag and drop ease

The Exploration technique allows you to visualize your data with drag and drop ease

  • Funnels: Identify important steps to conversion and understand how users navigate among them—where they enter the funnel, as well as where they drop off—with both open and closed funnel options. 

Understand how users engage with a sequences of key events on your app and website using the Funnels technique

Understand how users engage with a sequence of key events on your app and website using the Funnels technique

  • Path analysis: Understand the actions users take between the steps within a funnel to help explain why users did or did not convert.

Visualize actions taken on the users’ path to conversion with the Path analysis technique

Visualize actions taken on the users’ path to conversion with the Path analysis technique

Once you’ve surfaced insights from your analysis, you can use the results to create audiences and use those audiences to deliver more relevant marketing experiences to your customers. 

Start measuring across platforms

The first version of this new app and web experience—including the new event model and new analysis capabilities—will be available to all Analytics and Analytics 360 accounts in beta in the coming weeks. If you use Google Tag Manager or the global site tag for Google Analytics today, there’s no re-tagging required for your website. To include your app data, you’ll need the Firebase SDK implemented in your app. See how to get started in Google Analytics, or if you’re an existing Firebase customer, here’s how to upgrade.

If your business has both an app and website, and is looking for a more complete view of how your customers engage across both, we encourage you to participate in this beta and share your feedback. We are working to make Google Analytics the best possible solution for helping you understand the customer journey and create great customer experiences across platforms. Your partnership is essential to help us get there.

A new way to unify app and website measurement in Google Analytics

People expect to interact with businesses when and how they like, such as browsing a brand's website to research a product and then purchasing it later using the brand's app. Getting insight into these cross-platform journeys is critical for businesses to predict customer needs and provide great experiences—but it can be very challenging.

Currently, many businesses measure app engagement with Google Analytics for Firebase and website engagement with Google Analytics. While each of these products separately offer powerful insights, getting a more unified picture of engagement across your app and website can be a manual and painstaking process. 

To make this simpler, we’re announcing a new way to measure apps and websites together for the first time in Google Analytics.

Unified app and web analytics  

First, we’re introducing a new property type, App + Web, that allows you to combine app and web data for unified reporting and analysis.

Onboarding

 Measure your app and website together in Google Analytics

Reports for this new property use a single set of consistent metrics and dimensions, making it possible to see integrated reporting across app and web like never before. Now you can answer questions like: Which marketing channel is responsible for acquiring the most new users across your different platforms? How many total unique users do you have, regardless of which platform they use? How many conversions have occurred on your app and website in the last week—and which platform is driving most of these conversions?

User Overview

See combined metrics across your app and website

You can also go deeper to understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns across platforms. For example, you can see how many users started on your app then visited your website to make a purchase.

Flexible event measurement

Understanding how people engage with your app and website means that you need to measure a diverse range of user interactions like clicks, page views, app opens, and more. We’re making it easier to measure those actions on all of your platforms in a consistent way. The new property type utilizes a more flexible event-based model for collecting the unique interactions that users have with your content, allowing you to measure any custom event that you set up. 

This event-based model also allows you to automate the manual work of tagging some of the events on your site with no additional coding required. In addition to page views, enhanced measurement allows you to measure many common web events like scrolls, downloads, video views and more with the flip of a toggle in the admin settings for your property.

Enhanced measurement helps you measure events with the flip of a toggle

Enhanced measurement helps you measure events with the flip of a toggle

Cross-platform analysis

Given the many different ways people interact with your brand between app and web, you need flexible tools to make sense of your data and discover insights unique to your business. The new Analysis module enables you to examine your data in ways that are not limited by pre-defined reports.

There are a number of techniques you can use including: 

  • Exploration: Conduct ad-hoc analysis by dragging and dropping multiple variables—the different segments, dimensions, and metrics you use to measure your business—onto a canvas to see instant visualizations of yourdata.

The Exploration technique allows you to visualize your data with drag and drop ease

The Exploration technique allows you to visualize your data with drag and drop ease

  • Funnels: Identify important steps to conversion and understand how users navigate among them—where they enter the funnel, as well as where they drop off—with both open and closed funnel options. 

Understand how users engage with a sequences of key events on your app and website using the Funnels technique

Understand how users engage with a sequence of key events on your app and website using the Funnels technique

  • Path analysis: Understand the actions users take between the steps within a funnel to help explain why users did or did not convert.

Visualize actions taken on the users’ path to conversion with the Path analysis technique

Visualize actions taken on the users’ path to conversion with the Path analysis technique

Once you’ve surfaced insights from your analysis, you can use the results to create audiences and use those audiences to deliver more relevant marketing experiences to your customers. 

Start measuring across platforms

The first version of this new app and web experience—including the new event model and new analysis capabilities—will be available to all Analytics and Analytics 360 accounts in beta in the coming weeks. If you use Google Tag Manager or the global site tag for Google Analytics today, there’s no re-tagging required for your website. To include your app data, you’ll need the Firebase SDK implemented in your app. See how to get started in Google Analytics, or if you’re an existing Firebase customer, here’s how to upgrade.

If your business has both an app and website, and is looking for a more complete view of how your customers engage across both, we encourage you to participate in this beta and share your feedback. We are working to make Google Analytics the best possible solution for helping you understand the customer journey and create great customer experiences across platforms. Your partnership is essential to help us get there.

YouTube brings the sights and sounds of Lollapalooza 2019 to millions of music fans around the world with official live stream

YouTube will exclusively bring the biggest performances from Grant Park, Chicago to millions of music fans all over the world with the official live stream of Lollapalooza 2019, August 1 to 4. Iconic music moments from artists including twenty one pilots, The Revivalists, Janelle Monae, Rüfüs Du Sol and more will also be available via the live stream within the YouTube Music app.

In addition to curated performances throughout the four-day festival, YouTube Originals is partnering with Lollapalooza to produce original creative content, including backstage moments and exclusive artist moments just before they take the stage to be featured in and around the live stream. YouTube Music will amplify the Lollapalooza experience by presenting Lollapalooza themed playlists, The Lineup and Emerging Artists, to give fans another way to find all the music they love in one place.

YouTube’s live streams bring the festival experience into the hands and homes of millions of fans around the world. There is no other platform of its kind that allows artists to connect with a global audience and share their creativity in both visual and audio formats with billions of viewers around the globe, making the world smaller and music more expansive. The 2019 Lollapalooza live stream is presented by COVERGIRL, Warner Bros. Pictures (for the film "Blinded by the Light"), and T-Mobile.

Subscribe to Lollapalooza’s YouTube Channel for up-to-date information on when your favorite artists are streaming live, and follow @youtubemusic on Instagram and Twitter for behind-the-scenes moments all weekend long. There, you can watch the latest videos and relive past moments.

Source: YouTube Blog


Get help from the Google Assistant on your DISH Hopper

Surfing through the list of TV shows or movies for a night at home is often time consuming. You can try typing out titles from the on screen keyboard, but that can be equally frustrating. Now, the DISH Hopper family of receivers can help you find content faster with the Google Assistant, which can be accessed with the new DISH voice remote.

With the DISH voice remote and the Google Assistant, you can use your voice to search for content based on channel, title, actor or genre. Plus you'll get all the usual help from the Assistant.

Here are a few things you can do:

Enjoy entertainment

Use the Google Assistant to play, pause, fast forward, rewind and search for content across DISH’s library of live TV and on-demand content, plus your favorite movies, shows, and YouTube videos. Just press the mic button on the voice remote and say, “Show me sci-fi movies,” “Change the channel to Food Network,” or “Turn on closed captions.” 

Control your home

Press the mic button on your voice remote and ask your Assistant to adjust the temperature, lighting, and other smart home devices connected in your home. Give these a try: “Dim the living room lights” or “Set the thermostat to 72 degrees.”

Manage tasks

Ask your Assistant “Tell me about my day” to see your calendar, ask “how's traffic to work” before you head out the door, or “add popcorn to the shopping list” to prep for your  next movie night. 

Get answers

Ask your Assistant questions and see the answers on your TV screen with DISH. Get answers related to what you're watching, favorite shows, characters, and actors. You can also get information on local businesses, flight details, and game scores. For example, “What pizzerias near me are open now?” or “What’s the score of the baseball game?” 

DISH customers with a voice remote and a broadband-connected Hopper (all generations), Joey (all models) or Wally can access the Google Assistant once they receive the software update. New customers and existing DISH customers without a voice remote can visit mydish.com/voice-remote to check their eligibility for the new voice remote at no extra cost. 

From the comfort of your own couch, you now have all the capabilities of the Google Assistant right from the remote control. 

New innovations to grow your app business with ads

App developers around the world are pushing the limits of innovation to meet consumers' high expectations. In an increasingly competitive global market, it’s more important than ever for app developers to find better ways to build and grow their businesses.

Today at Think Games at ChinaJoy, we are sharing innovations that help you find more users and grow your revenue with Google’s latest solutions.

Reach more users when they’re looking for something new 

Connecting with the right people at the right time is key to building a strong user base. Google App campaigns make it easy for you to find app-happy users across Google Search, Play, YouTube and over 3 million sites and apps in our network. Here are some new ways App campaigns can help you expand your global reach.

Discover (formerly known as the Google feed) helps over 800 million monthly active users uncover fresh and interesting content related to the things they care about—like global news and topics of interest like sports, music, and mobile games. Now, you can access Discover inventory through App campaigns to make a strong impression on more users with relevant and visually engaging ads.

Headspace

               Ad for the Headspace app in Discover


App campaigns running in the United States will now automatically reach more potential users on Discover who are open to exploring your app. And in the coming months, your app ads on Discover will also serve in Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. We aim to bring app ads in Discover to all available markets before the end of this year. 

In addition to Discover⁠, we’re introducing new reach opportunities on two more platforms:

  • App ads on YouTube Search: Your app promotion ads are now eligible to show in the top slot of YouTube’s mobile search results. Combining YouTube’s global audience with rich intent signals helps you deliver relevant and useful ads to more prospective app users.

App ad for Tap Titans

           App ad for Tap Titans 2 in YouTube Search


  • In-stream video ads in our display network: Display in-stream video ads are skippable video ads that play before, during, or after a video a user is watching. Starting next month, you can reach more people with your ads while they're viewing video content on mobile apps and sites in our network.

Grow revenue and deliver a better user experience

Finding the right users is important, but developers need to think about growing overall revenue in order to build sustainable businesses. By integrating ads during natural break points in your app you can build a new revenue stream and deliver a better user experience.

Our new app open ad format allows you to show ads to your users as they wait for your app to load. Designed to seamlessly integrate with your app’s branding, this format gives you new ways to earn revenue while creating a good user experience. Reach out to your account manager to get started with this format in alpha.  

In addition to the new app open ads, here are two more ways we are helping you grow revenue while delivering better ad experiences for your users:


  • Smart segmentation is now available for rewarded ad units. This feature, announced earlier this year for interstitial ads units, only shows ads to users unlikely to make purchases in your app. This protects the user experience of your purchasers while growing your ads revenue.

  • AdMob Insights: Our new Insights feature provides alerts to your AdMob dashboard when our system detects abnormal changes to your key metrics like eCPM, impressions and revenue. This new beta lets you know instantly if changes in your app are impacting user experience.

To learn more about how our new solutions can help you connect with the right users and scale your business, join our livestream at 1:40 pm SST during the Think Games event at ChinaJoy in Shanghai, China on August 1st, 2019. 

Source: Google Ads


Make stronger decisions with new Google Play Console data

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play

At this year’s Google I/O, we announced a slate of new features to help you take your business further with Google Play. Launching today, these changes include several improvements designed to help you make better decisions about your business by providing clearer, more actionable data.

We know the right data is critical to help you improve your app performance and grow your business. That’s why we’re excited to share a major update that enables you to better measure and analyse your core statistics — the most fundamental install and uninstall metrics by user and device. We’ve also enhanced the Statistics page on the Play Console to show change over time, enable more granular configurations, and, coming soon, exclusive benchmarks for core stats!

Statistics page on the Play Console

More granular configurations are now available on the Statistics page to help you better understand your acquisition and churn.

More accurate and more expansive than before, the new metrics will help you better understand your acquisition and churn. For the first time, we are including data on returning users and devices - something that we understand is critical to many developers' growth strategies.

We’re also including new install methods (such as pre-installs and peer-to-peer sharing) and the ability to aggregate and dedupe over periods that suit your business needs. With these new updates, you can perform analyses that weren’t possible before, such as how many people re-installed your app last month.

Here’s what else is new:

  • Clearer, consistent metrics definitions:
    • Select users or devices, acquisitions or losses
    • Define if you’re interested in new, returning, or all users
    • Measure events (for example, when someone installs) or uniques (for instance, every person who installs)
  • Change analysis charts automatically show the largest changes during a selected period of time for a given dimension, making it easy to see the largest contributors to your metric trends.
  • Saved reports allow you to configure your metrics just the way you want them, then save them for easy retrieval and common analyses.
  • Suggested reports help you to find interesting ways to combine your data for more valuable analysis.
  • And finally, all configured data can be downloaded as CSVs from within the interface.

As a result of these updates, you will notice a few changes to your metrics. Old metrics names will be deprecated, but you can configure new metrics that map to the old ones with this cheat sheet. And don’t forget to use the ‘save report’ feature on the stats page so you can easily return to any configurations you find particularly helpful!

Save report feature on the stats page

Don’t forget to use the ‘save this report’ feature on the stats page to easily return to any configurations you find particularly helpful.

Other metrics like active user and active device will see a step-change as the new definitions are more expansive and include previously under-counted data.

Some new metrics map onto older ones. Where this happens, all historic data will be automatically included. But in other cases new metrics will only be generated from launch day. For unique devices or users, weekly metrics will start to appear two weeks after launch, monthly metrics once there’s a single full month’s data, and quarterly metrics once there’s a full quarter’s data.

We know it’s a lot to take in at once, so make sure to bookmark the cheat sheet for helpful tips as you navigate the transition and explore your new metrics. Additionally, our Decision-Making with the Google Play Console session from Google I/O and our Play Academy training are other great resources to help you get up to speed.

Check out these updates in the Google Play Console today — we hope you find them useful. Your comments help to shape the future of Google Play, so please continue to let us know what you think.

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What’s under the hood: Security on Google Pay

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/kqimQE52YHUk85s4_gch87PrS7s5lO0NDSP3WkTLWJh3eJCMSeuEskErQ-sj2UmtRsIoO4gehtH99tYnR1V4f9duF3FRuNEQQ0GLAABwWbLTUOFvi17V0grH__j2cCX5bzJUi-7j Ambarish Kenghe Director, Product Management Google Pay
In the last two years, instant bank-to-bank transfers via UPI have become the preferred form of payment for millions of Indians, many adopting digital payments for the first time. At Google Pay, we’ve been very excited to be part of this story, and bringing the convenience of UPI to millions of users, in a simple and secure user experience. 


We launched Google Pay with the best of Google’s security infrastructure, leveraging our experience of 20 years of bringing some of the world’s most helpful technology products to billions of users worldwide. Some of these are: 

  • Enhanced fraud protections with SafetyNet: Beyond the ‘one device - one account’ safeguards offered by UPI, Google Pay is secured with Google Pay advanced fraud models and backed by Google’s authentication platform, ensuring world class protections against fraud attacks and faster identification and suspension of fraudsters.
  • Secure access: The PIN entry screens in Google Pay have been secured against remote desktop attacks since the early days of app’s launch, keeping our users safe, even when widespread scams have affected other digital payments users.
  • Blocking fraudsters from getting on to Google Pay: Our exhaustive risk relations check at the onboarding stage prevents known bad actors from recreating their accounts on the app.
  • Scam protections: Since its launch, Google Pay uses machine learning-based scam prevention models, and also displays explicit ‘scam’ or ‘stranger’ warnings if a user receives a request from someone suspicious or not in their contacts.
             

    • Explicit language and prominent warnings during collect requests: Collect requests as a flow are unique to UPI and thus might be new to several users. For this reason, Google Pay displays very clear and prominent warnings to the user about what it entails at each step.

      Additionally, to help our users fully understand each step on the app, we have now launched notifications and SMS alerts to clarify the direction of flow of money: Google Pay will now send app notifications as well as SMS to inform users each time they receive a collect request to highlight that approving the request will deduct money from the users’ bank accounts. 

      We are mindful that at Google Pay, users are entrusting us with their most sensitive asset - their money. We are conscious of the responsibility that comes with this trust. The above security features, and a lot more ongoing work in this direction, are a small example of how we keep our users safe. 

      As we make this journey together, there are steps that our users can also take to keep their money secure. Just as we learnt to handle cash carefully, the world of digital payments requires care and mindfulness as well, to ensure we keep our money safe. Some of these are:
      • Just as you keep your ATM card PIN private, your UPI PIN needs to be safeguarded in the same way. This code is only for your use, to securely access your UPI-linked bank account, via Google Pay. The same applies to your phone PIN.
      • Google Pay customer care representatives will never ask for your PIN or ask you to authorise a money transfer, while troubleshooting. If anyone contacts you with such a request, always decline.
      • UPI places incredible power in the hands of the user and money can only leave your account if you authorise it. Only approve transfer requests from people you trust, or for transactions that you have initiated. If you don’t remember initiating a transaction, decline.
      • Please pay attention to ‘scam’ and ‘stranger’ warnings that appear on Google Pay, in case an unknown contact requests for a money transfer. Read these signals carefully and only transact with people you trust. 
      • Be alert to the direction of the money flow. Receiving money never requires your UPI PIN, only sending money does. If you need to enter your UPI PIN, you are authorising a payment.
      • If you ever need any kind of support or help, our 24/7 support is available to help, who you can contact safely from within the app. Do not call unverified numbers present on the web. 
        These simple tips, along with Google Pay’s security infrastructure, can ensure that your experience on digital payments stays seamless, and you can leverage its many conveniences to the fullest. This journey is an ongoing one as we continue to learn and evolve the product, and look forward to your feedback to make Google Pay even more helpful in your daily life. 

        Posted by Ambarish Kenghe, Director, Product Management, Google Pay

        Chrome Beta for Android Update

        Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Beta 76 (76.0.3809.89) for Android: it's now available on Google Play.

        You can see a partial list of the changes in the Git log. For details on new features, check out the Chromium blog, and for details on web platform updates, check here.

        If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

        Krishna Govind
        Google Chrome

        Chrome Beta for Android Update

        Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Beta 76 (76.0.3809.89) for Android: it's now available on Google Play.

        You can see a partial list of the changes in the Git log. For details on new features, check out the Chromium blog, and for details on web platform updates, check here.

        If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

        Krishna Govind
        Google Chrome