Author Archives: A Googler

Broadening our COVID-19 support in India

GiveIndia providing oxygen supplies to a rural hospital in India 


As the pandemic has unfolded in India, it’s been humbling and inspiring to see individuals, communities, institutions, and governments work together to manage the impact of a crisis on a scale we haven’t experienced before. Technology has played a critical role, and our focus at Google has been on making sure people have the information and tools they need to stay informed, connected, and safe.  


We have worked to surface timely and reliable health information, amplify public health campaigns, and help nonprofits get urgent support to Indians in need. In April, through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we announced grants totaling $18 million USD (135 Crore INR) to expand the reach of public health information campaigns and support emergency relief work. 


Today, as India slowly emerges from the crisis of the past few months, we are turning our focus to helping strengthen India’s healthcare infrastructure and workforce -- especially in rural areas.


Building on our overall COVID-19 response, we are announcing new commitments to GiveIndia, PATH, Apollo Medskills and ARMMAN, focused on setting up oxygen generation plants and expanding the health workforce by strengthening COVID-19 management skills among frontline workers. 


Google.org will support procurement and installation of approximately 80 oxygen generation plants in healthcare facilities in high-need and rural locations with new grants totalling approximately $15 million USD (109 Crore INR) to GiveIndia and PATH. The two organizations will work together to oversee the oxygen program, providing project management support — including procurement and installation of plants. PATH will identify the target locations and provide technical assistance for the project, working with state governments and other authorities, and complete the installation of the plants. 


As part of our new commitment, Google is investing in the efforts of Apollo Medskills to help upskill 20,000 frontline health workers through specialized training in COVID-19 management. This will complement and strengthen the stressed rural health workforce and rural health systems. 


To further bolster these efforts, Google.org will provide a $500,000 USD  (3.6 Crore INR ) grant to nonprofit ARMMAN. ARMMAN will run skilling programs for 180,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and 40,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) in 15 Indian states. It will also set up a call center to provide additional help and advice for ASHAs and ANMs where required.


Google is proud to be supporting these organizations as they build a bigger, better-equipped healthcare system, help India steady itself after the pandemic’s second wave and lay the foundations for a sustainable healthcare system over the longer term. 


Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Country Head & Vice President, India

New protections for Enhanced Safe Browsing users in Chrome

In 2020 we launched Enhanced Safe Browsing, which you can turn on in your Chrome security settings, with the goal of substantially increasing safety on the web. These improvements are being built on top of existing security mechanisms that already protect billions of devices. Since the initial launch, we have continuously worked behind the scenes to improve our real-time URL checks and apply machine learning models to warn on previously-unknown attacks. As a result, Enhanced Safe Browsing users are successfully phished 35 percent less than other users.  Starting with Chrome 91, we will roll out new features to help Enhanced Safe Browsing users better choose their extensions, as well as offer additional protections against downloading malicious files on the web. 

Chrome extensions - Better protection before installation

Every day millions of people rely on Chrome extensions to help them be more productive, save money, shop or simply improve their browser experience. This is why it is important for us to continuously improve the safety of extensions published in the Chrome Web Store. For instance, through our integration with Google Safe Browsing in 2020, the number of malicious extensions that Chrome disabled to protect users grew by 81 percent. This comes on top of a number of improvements for more peace of mind when it comes to privacy and security.

Enhanced Safe Browsing will now offer additional protection when you install a new extension from the Chrome Web Store. A dialog will inform you if an extension you’re about to install is not a part of the list of extensions trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing.

Any extensions built by a developer who follows the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies, will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing.  For new developers, it will take at least a few months of respecting these conditions to become trusted. Eventually, we strive for all developers with compliant extensions to reach this status upon meeting these criteria. Today, this represents nearly 75 percent of all extensions in the Chrome Web Store and we expect this number to keep growing as new developers become trusted.

Improved download protection

Enhanced Safe Browsing will now offer you even better protection against risky files.

When you download a file, Chrome performs a first level check with Google Safe Browsing using metadata about the downloaded file, such as the digest of the contents and the source of the file, to determine whether it’s potentially suspicious. For any downloads that Safe Browsing deems risky, but not clearly unsafe, Enhanced Safe Browsing users will be presented with a warning and the ability to send the file to be scanned for a more in depth analysis (pictured above).

If you choose to send the file, Chrome will upload it to Google Safe Browsing, which will scan it using its static and dynamic analysis classifiers in real time. After a short wait, if Safe Browsing determines the file is unsafe, Chrome will display a warning. As always, you can bypass the warning and open the file without scanning. Uploaded files are deleted from Safe Browsing a short time after scanning.

Posted by Badr Salmi, Google Safe Browsing & Varun Khaneja, Chrome Security

Google I/O 2021: Being helpful in moments that matter

 

It’s great to be back hosting our I/O Developers Conference this year. Pulling up to our Mountain View campus this morning, I felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long while. Of course, it’s not the same without our developer community here in person. COVID-19 has deeply affected our entire global community over the past year and continues to take a toll. Places such as Brazil, and my home country of India, are now going through their most difficult moments of the pandemic yet. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by COVID and we are all hoping for better days ahead.

The last year has put a lot into perspective. At Google, it’s also given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with a singular goal: building a more helpful Google, for everyone. That means being helpful to people in the moments that matter and giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health, and happiness. 

Helping in moments that matter

Sometimes it’s about helping in big moments, like keeping 150 million students and educators learning virtually over the last year with Google Classroom. Other times it’s about helping in little moments that add up to big changes for everyone. For example, we’re introducing safer routing in Maps. This AI-powered capability in Maps can identify road, weather, and traffic conditions where you are likely to brake suddenly; our aim is to reduce up to 100 million events like this every year. 

Reimagining the future of work

One of the biggest ways we can help is by reimagining the future of work. Over the last year, we’ve seen work transform in unprecedented ways, as offices and coworkers have been replaced by kitchen countertops and pets. Many companies, including ours, will continue to offer flexibility even when it’s safe to be in the same office again. Collaboration tools have never been more critical, and today we announced a new smart canvas experience in Google Workspace that enables even richer collaboration. 

Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

Responsible next-generation AI

We’ve made remarkable advances over the past 22 years, thanks to our progress in some of the most challenging areas of AI, including translation, images and voice. These advances have powered improvements across Google products, making it possible to talk to someone in another language using Assistant’s interpreter mode, view cherished memories on Photos, or use Google Lens to solve a tricky math problem. 

We’ve also used AI to improve the core Search experience for billions of people by taking a huge leap forward in a computer’s ability to process natural language. Yet, there are still moments when computers just don’t understand us. That’s because language is endlessly complex: We use it to tell stories, crack jokes, and share ideas — weaving in concepts we’ve learned over the course of our lives. The richness and flexibility of language make it one of humanity’s greatest tools and one of computer science’s greatest challenges. 

Today I am excited to share our latest research in natural language understanding: LaMDA. LaMDA is a language model for dialogue applications. It’s open domain, which means it is designed to converse on any topic. For example, LaMDA understands quite a bit about the planet Pluto. So if a student wanted to discover more about space, they could ask about Pluto and the model would give sensible responses, making learning even more fun and engaging. If that student then wanted to switch over to a different topic — say, how to make a good paper airplane — LaMDA could continue the conversation without any retraining.

This is one of the ways we believe LaMDA can make information and computing radically more accessible and easier to use (and you can learn more about that here). 

We have been researching and developing language models for many years. We’re focused on ensuring LaMDA meets our incredibly high standards on fairness, accuracy, safety, and privacy, and that it is developed consistently with our AI Principles. And we look forward to incorporating conversation features into products like Google Assistant, Search, and Workspace, as well as exploring how to give capabilities to developers and enterprise customers.

LaMDA is a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it’s still only trained on text. When people communicate with each other they do it across images, text, audio, and video. So we need to build multimodal models (MUM) to allow people to naturally ask questions across different types of information. With MUM you could one day plan a road trip by asking Google to “find a route with beautiful mountain views.” This is one example of how we’re making progress towards more natural and intuitive ways of interacting with Search.

Pushing the frontier of computing

Translation, image recognition, and voice recognition laid the foundation for complex models like LaMDA and multimodal models. Our compute infrastructure is how we drive and sustain these advances, and TPUs, our custom-built machine learning processes, are a big part of that. Today we announced our next generation of TPUs: the TPU v4. These are powered by the v4 chip, which is more than twice as fast as the previous generation. One pod can deliver more than one exaflop, equivalent to the computing power of 10 million laptops combined. This is the fastest system we’ve ever deployed, and a historic milestone for us. Previously to get to an exaflop, you needed to build a custom supercomputer. And we'll soon have dozens of TPUv4 pods in our data centers, many of which will be operating at or near 90% carbon-free energy. They’ll be available to our Cloud customers later this year.

(Left) TPU v4 chip tray; (Right) TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center 

It’s tremendously exciting to see this pace of innovation. As we look further into the future, there are types of problems that classical computing will not be able to solve in reasonable time. Quantum computing can help. Achieving our quantum milestone was a tremendous accomplishment, but we’re still at the beginning of a multiyear journey. We continue to work to get to our next big milestone in quantum computing: building an error-corrected quantum computer, which could help us increase battery efficiency, create more sustainable energy, and improve drug discovery. To help us get there, we’ve opened a new state of the art Quantum AI campus with our first quantum data center and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

Inside our new Quantum AI campus.

Safer with Google

At Google we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. And advances in computer science and AI are how we continue to make them better. We keep more users safe by blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages, and potential cyber attacks than anyone else in the world.

Our focus on data minimization pushes us to do more, with less data. Two years ago at I/O, I announced Auto-Delete, which encourages users to have their activity data automatically and continuously deleted. We’ve since made Auto-Delete the default for all new Google Accounts. Now, after 18 months we automatically delete your activity data, unless you tell us to do it sooner. It’s now active for over 2 billion accounts.

All of our products are guided by three important principles: With one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures, our products are secure by default. We strictly uphold responsible data practices so every product we build is private by design. And we create easy to use privacy and security settings so you’re in control.

Long term research: Project Starline

We were all grateful to have video conferencing over the last year to stay in touch with family and friends, and keep schools and businesses going. But there is no substitute for being together in the room with someone. 

Several years ago we kicked off a project called Project Starline to use technology to explore what’s possible. Using high-resolution cameras and custom-built depth sensors, it captures your shape and appearance from multiple perspectives, and then fuses them together to create an extremely detailed, real-time 3D model. The resulting data is many gigabits per second, so to send an image this size over existing networks, we developed novel compression and streaming algorithms that reduce the data by a factor of more than 100. We also developed a breakthrough light-field display that shows you the realistic representation of someone sitting in front of you. As sophisticated as the technology is, it vanishes, so you can focus on what’s most important. 

We’ve spent thousands of hours testing it at our own offices, and the results are promising. There’s also excitement from our lead enterprise partners, and we’re working with partners in health care and media to get early feedback. In pushing the boundaries of remote collaboration, we've made technical advances that will improve our entire suite of communications products. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

A person having a conversation with someone over Project Starline.

Solving complex sustainability challenges

Another area of research is our work to drive forward sustainability. Sustainability has been a core value for us for more than 20 years. We were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007. We were the first to match our operations with 100% renewable energy in 2017, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Last year we eliminated our entire carbon legacy. 

Our next ambition is our biggest yet: operating on carbon free energy by the year 2030. This represents a significant step change from current approaches and is a moonshot on the same scale as quantum computing. It presents equally hard problems to solve, from sourcing carbon-free energy in every place we operate to ensuring it can run every hour of every day. 

Building on the first carbon-intelligent computing platform that we rolled out last year, we’ll soon be the first company to implement carbon-intelligent load shifting across both time and place within our data center network. By this time next year we’ll be shifting more than a third of non-production compute to times and places with greater availability of carbon-free energy. And we are working to apply our Cloud AI with novel drilling techniques and fiber optic sensing to deliver geothermal power in more places, starting in our Nevada data centers next year.

Investments like these are needed to get to 24/7 carbon-free energy, and it’s happening in Mountain View, California, too. We’re building our new campus to the highest sustainability standards. When completed, these buildings will feature a first- of- its- kind, dragonscale solar skin, equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts. They will house the largest geothermal pile system in North America to help heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It’s been amazing to see it come to life.

(Left) Rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; (Right) Model view with dragon scale solar skin.

A celebration of technology

I/O isn’t just a celebration of technology but of the people who use it, and build it — including the millions of developers around the world who joined us virtually today. Over the past year we’ve seen people use technology in profound ways: to keep themselves healthy and safe, to learn and grow, to connect, and to help one another through really difficult times. It’s been inspiring to see and has made us more committed than ever to being helpful in the moments that matter. 

I look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s I/O — in person, I hope. Until then, be safe and well.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet

Search, explore and shop the world’s information, powered by AI

AI advancements push the boundaries of what Google products can do. Nowhere is this clearer than at the core of our mission to make information more accessible and useful for everyone.


We've spent more than two decades developing not just a better understanding of information on the web, but a better understanding of the world. Because when we understand information, we can make it more helpful  — whether you’re a remote student learning a complex new subject, a caregiver looking for trusted information on COVID vaccines or a parent searching for the best route home.


Deeper understanding with MUM

One of the hardest problems for search engines today is helping you with complex tasks — like planning what to do on a family outing. These often require multiple searches to get the information you need. In fact, we find that it takes people eight searches on average to complete complex tasks.


With a new technology called Multitask Unified Model, or MUM, we're able to better understand much more complex questions and needs, so in the future, it will require fewer searches to get things done. Like BERT, MUM is built on a Transformer architecture, but it’s 1,000 times more powerful and can multitask in order to unlock information in new ways. MUM not only understands language, but also generates it. It’s trained across 75 different languages and many different tasks at once, allowing it to develop a more comprehensive understanding of information and world knowledge than previous models. And MUM is multimodal, so it understands information across text and images and in the future, can expand to more modalities like video and audio.


Imagine a question like: “I’ve hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?” This would stump search engines today, but in the future, MUM could understand this complex task and generate a response, pointing to highly relevant results to dive deeper. We’ve already started internal pilots with MUM and are excited about its potential for improving Google products.

 

Information comes to life with Lens and AR

People come to Google to learn new things, and visuals can make all the difference. Google Lens lets you search what you see — from your camera, your photos or even your search bar. Today we’re seeing more than 3 billion searches with Lens every month, and an increasingly popular use case is learning. For example, many students might have schoolwork in a language they aren't very familiar with. That’s why we’re updating the Translate filter in Lens so it’s easy to copy, listen to or search translated text, helping students access education content from the web in over 100 languages.

 

Google Lens’s Translate filter applied to homework.

AR is also a powerful tool for visual learning. With the new AR athletes in Search, you can see signature moves from some of your favorite athletes in AR — like Simone Biles’s famous balance beam routine.

Simone Biles’s balance beam routine surfaced by the AR athletes in Search feature.

Evaluate information with About This Result 

Helpful information should be credible and reliable, and especially during moments like the pandemic or elections, people turn to Google for trustworthy information. 

 

Our ranking systems are designed to prioritize high-quality information, but we also help you evaluate the credibility of sources, right in Google Search. Our About This Result feature provides details about a website before you visit it, including its description, when it was first indexed and whether your connection to the site is secure. 

 

 

This month, we’ll start rolling out About This Result to all English results worldwide, with more languages to come. Later this year, we’ll add even more detail, like how a site describes itself, what other sources are saying about it and related articles to check out. 

 

Exploring the real world with Maps

Google Maps transformed how people navigate, explore and get things done in the world — and we continue to push the boundaries of what a map can be with industry-first features like AR navigation in Live View at scale. We recently announced we’re on track to launch over 100 AI-powered improvements to Google Maps by the end of year, and today, we’re introducing a few of the newest ones. Our new routing updates are designed to reduce the likelihood of hard-braking on your drive using machine learning and historical navigation information — which we believe could eliminate over 100 million hard-braking events in routes driven with Google Maps each year.

 

If you’re looking for things to do, our more tailored map will spotlight relevant places based on time of day and whether or not you’re traveling. Enhancements to Live View and detailed street maps will help you explore and get a deep understanding of an area as quickly as possible. And if you want to see how busy neighborhoods and parts of town are, you’ll be able to do this at a glance as soon as you open Maps.


More ways to shop with Google 

People are shopping across Google more than a billion times per day, and our AI-enhanced Shopping Graph — our deep understanding of products, sellers, brands, reviews, product information and inventory data — powers many features that help you find exactly what you’re looking for.


Because shopping isn’t always a linear experience, we’re introducing new ways to explore and keep track of products. Now, when you take a screenshot, Google Photos will prompt you to search the photo with Lens, so you can immediately shop for that item if you want. And on Chrome, we’ll help you keep track of shopping carts you’ve begun to fill, so you can easily resume your virtual shopping trip. We're also working with retailers to surface loyalty benefits for customers earlier, to help inform their decisions.


Last year we made it free for merchants to sell their products on Google. Now, we’re introducing a new, simplified process that helps Shopify’s 1.7 million merchants make their products discoverable across Google in just a few clicks.  


Whether we’re understanding the world’s information, or helping you understand it too, we’re dedicated to making our products more useful every day. And with the power of AI, no matter how complex your task, we’ll be able to bring you the highest quality, most relevant results.  


Posted by Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President

More ways we’re making every day safer with Google

Every day, we focus on making sure you’re in control of your data by building products that are secure by default and private by design. At this year’s I/O, we’re introducing new features and technologies to keep you safer with Google. 


Putting you in control of your data 


Privacy is personal. That's why we make it easy for you to choose the settings that are right for you — whether that’s one place to manage settings in your Google Account, Auto-Delete options, or controls that appear in context when you’re using our products. We announced a number of new controls today: 


  • Quick delete in Search. We’re introducing a new, “quick delete” option to delete the last 15 minutes of your Search history with a single tap from the Google Account Menu. 

  • A passcode protected Locked Folder in Photos. Have you ever handed your phone to show someone a photo, but worried they might scroll to a personal or sensitive image — like a photo of your passport or a surprise gift? “Locked Folder” is a new feature in Google Photos —  a passcode-protected space where select photos can be saved separately. These photos won’t show up as you scroll through your grid or in shared albums. This feature is coming to Google Pixels first, and more Android devices throughout the year.

  • Location History reminders in your Maps Timeline. Now, when you see places you've visited in your Timeline, we'll remind you that it's because you turned on Location History — which you can easily turn off right there in your Timeline. 

1. New “quick delete” option in Search.  2. The new Locked Folder in Photos. 3. Location History reminders in your Maps Timeline. 


We’re also introducing new, industry-leading transparency and permission features on Android 12. The new OS includes a Privacy Dashboard where you will see a timeline of when apps accessed your camera, microphone, or device location. We’ve also added indicators that show when your camera or microphone are in use, as well as easy toggles to disable access to both across your device. And you can now choose to share your approximate location with an app instead of a precise one.  


Building products that are secure by default


As recent high-profile third-party security incidents show, your information isn’t private if it’s not secure. With AI-driven technologies that protect billions of users around the world, our products are secure by default: every day, we block 100 million phishing attempts and 15 billion spam messages in Gmail and encrypt 4 billion photos. And Safe Browsing on Chrome and most other browsers helps keep the rest of the Internet secure, automatically protecting more than 4 billion devices.


One of the biggest security risks is still the continued reliance on passwords — they’re often easy to crack, used across multiple sites, or stolen in phishing attacks. That’s why we’ve been working towards a password-free future — focusing on safer ways to authenticate your identity and building multiple layers of protection into your Google Account, like automatic enrollment in 2-step verification. 


But because passwords are still required for most online accounts, we’ve also continued to improve our Password Manager, built directly into Chrome, Android and now iOS, to help you create, remember, save and auto-fill passwords across the web. Today, we announced new enhancements to Password Manager:

  • A new tool that makes it easy to import passwords from other password managers

  • Deeper integrations with Chrome and Android to seamlessly fill your passwords across sites and apps, regardless of whether you’re on desktop or on mobile 

  • Password Alerts that automatically warn you if we detect one of your saved passwords has been compromised via a third party breach.

  • A smart way to fix compromised passwords in Chrome with a simple tap. For supported sites and apps, whenever Password Manager finds a password that may have been compromised, you’ll see a "change password" button from Assistant. When you tap the button, the Assistant will not only navigate to the site, but also go through the entire process of changing your password. This feature is available on Android devices and will be rolling out to more sites and apps in the future.


1. A new way to fix compromised passwords in Chrome. 2. A new tool to import passwords from other password managers to Password Manager. 3. Password Alerts. 


Making our products private by design


We’ve pioneered new computing technologies like Federated Learning (invented by Google researchers in 2016) that make it possible to deliver helpful experiences while protecting individual data and privacy. We’ve also led on Differential Privacy, which powers some of our most helpful features and products, from our COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports to traffic predictions in Maps, without revealing individual user data. And this expertise guides our work on broader industry initiatives, like the open-source Privacy Sandbox. 


Now, we’re continuing that work with Android's Private Compute Core, which keeps your information safe and private for a number of popular AI-driven features like Live Caption (which displays captions based on audio), Now Playing (which tells you the song that’s playing) and Smart Reply (which suggests short responses to messages and emails). For these features, the audio and language processing happens exclusively on your device. Like the rest of Android, Private Compute Core is open source — it’s fully inspectable and verifiable by the security community. 


We’ll continue our work to make every day safer with Google with new controls, advanced security, and privacy-preserving technologies.


Posted by Jen Fitzpatrick, SVP, Core

Answering your top questions about Google News Showcase in India

At a time when people are looking for quality journalism and publishers are finding new ways to engage with readers, the launch of Google News Showcase is critically important. At the first wave of launch, we have 30 news publishers in India signed up, including national, regional and local news organizations like The Hindu Group, HT Digital Streams Ltd, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, Dainik Jagran, The Telegraph India, IANS (Indo Asian News Service) and ANI. 

Logos of our current Indian news partners for Google News Showcase

Read on to find out more about Google News Showcase:

What is Google News Showcase?

Google News Showcase is our new online experience and licensing program that licenses text and other assets, and incentivises for curated contents. When readers click on the link they are taken directly to the publisher news site where they can read the full article. This program supports news publishers to curate high quality content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, connecting readers with the news they need. 

What is the benefit to publishers?

News Showcase helps publishers deepen their relationships with readers by utilising their branding and presentation to present content in a way that’s true to their look and feel. It also adds to the sustainability of news businesses where News Showcase partners receive a fixed monthly fee for curating their articles on News Showcase, and in some cases providing access to articles behind their paywall so that readers can see the value of becoming subscribers and publishers can build a relationship with readers. In addition to the fee Google pays to the publisher partners, News Showcase helps publishers grow their audience and their business by directing readers to their site where they can monetise by showing ads and offers to subscribe.

Since we launched News Showcase globally, users have followed news publishers more than 200,000 times thanks to the features we launched alongside News Showcase. This is a huge increase in traffic, and we’re looking forward to seeing these new relationships develop even further.

What is the benefit to users?

Users of News Showcase get a richer news experience from trusted news organisations and can discover publications covering their interests and the places they care about. News Showcase panels allow readers to dive deeper into a story and see a list of important articles updated multiple times per day by their favourite publishers.  

What is Google paying for?

Payments are made for the publishers’ curatorial expertise for beyond-the-paywall access and to curate content for story panels over Google platforms. Publishers receive monthly fees. News Showcase is not a pay-per-click model, anything publishers get in terms of additional traffic from story panels or new subscribers is on top of that fee.

Content from Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels over Google News and on Discover. We’re committed to expanding in additional languages for India. As part of our licensing agreements with publishers, we're also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, while deepening readers’ relationships with publishers and encouraging them to subscribe. 

What features are available in the News Showcase?

We’re initially offering four panel layouts as part of Google News Showcase - bullet points, timeline, rundown and related articles. Depending on the story and how they want to tell it, participating publishers can pick the ideal template to showcase the best of their journalism and tell stories the way they want to. This additional context for users not only helps them understand the story better, but also helps them to get to know the publisher’s editorial voice and priorities. We’ll have more feature updates coming soon.  

Participating publications can also use the extended access feature where Google pays to allow readers to access some of their paywalled content provided through News Showcase. In return, users will register with the news publisher, providing a way for the publisher to build a relationship with readers. 

Where does it appear?

The Google News App: Google News Showcase story panels are now live in the Google News app. To view, navigate to news.google.com/showcase on your mobile, or you can download the app. (Android, iOS)

Discover: The panels are starting to roll out on Discover on iOS soon, and will be visible to Indian users in the coming days. Discover appears in the Google Search App on mobile devices. The Google App is preinstalled on Android devices and can be downloaded for iOS here.

How can I see story panels today?

If you open the Google News app and navigate to the newsstand tab, you’ll see a carousel of story panels. And if you follow one of the publishers who are part of this initial launch, you might see one of the panels in your For You feed in the app.

Will the News Showcase affect the ranking of news publishers on Search and News app? 

We don’t give preference to News Showcase content when ranking feeds. Normal ranking principles apply to News Showcase content as it applies to regular content from a publisher. You’ll continue to see the personalized content you’ve come to expect from Google News, but if a participating publisher has opted to create a News Showcase panel featuring an article in your feed, you may see that panel instead of the article.

Are you planning to add more publishers in India? 

We’re starting with a good mix of news publishing partners covering a cross section of media across India, and we will continue to expand this effort further. Over the coming months we will bring more partners onboard and our goal is to add support for other language publishers in India. 

We fully recognize India’s large and diverse news ecosystem and they all have different needs. News Showcase is just one part of our overall commitment to the Indian news ecosystem.  We’ve announced we're expanding our Google News Initiative efforts in India and introducing several new programs to help small and mid-sized publications achieve financial sustainability. 

We will continue the constructive relationship we have built with the news industry, and work with everyone — including journalists, news outlets, news associations to build the future of news together. See what other publishers are saying.

Posted by Shilpa Jhunjhunwala, South APAC Head, News & Publishing Product Partnerships, and Brad Bender, VP of Product Management

Google’s support of the news industry in India

 At a time when the need for access to trustworthy information is critical, we are announcing a slew of investments to support India’s large and diverse news industry. These investments will help people find quality journalism, contribute to the sustainability of news organizations, and expand our programs under the Google News Initiative — enabling newsrooms to engage their readers in new and compelling ways through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Launching Google News Showcase in India 

Today’s announcement comes at a particularly challenging moment in India, with Indians seeking out authoritative news and information as the COVID-19 crisis deepens. To support news organizations and readers, we’re introducing Google News Showcase, our new online experience and licensing program. This program incentivizes and supports news publishers to curate high quality content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, connecting readers with the news they need.

Starting today, Google News Showcase is rolling out in India with 30 news publishers including national, regional and local news organizations like The Hindu Group, HT Digital Streams Ltd, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, The Telegraph India, IANS (Indo Asian News Service) and ANI.  This builds on News Showcase deals signed by 700 news publications in more than a dozen countries, including Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the U.K. Australia, Czechia, Italy and Argentina, more than 90% of them representing local or community news — with discussions underway in several other countries.

Examples of how News Showcase will look with the content of some of our news partners in India


Content from our Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels in Google News and on Discover. We’re committed to launching in additional Indic languages this year and we’ll continue to incorporate more languages in the future. As part of our licensing agreements with publishers, we're also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, while deepening readers’ relationships with publishers and encouraging them to subscribe.

Examples of how some of the content from our News Showcase partners in India will look


What our partners have to say about News Showcase 

“Google News Showcase is an excellent initiative by Google that lets publishers curate and surface factual and credible news content. It will enable serious publishers and news-seeking audiences to connect and engage in a meaningful way, taking a step closer towards sustainable growth models,” says Bharat Gupta, CEO of Jagran New Media, one of India’s largest media conglomerates.

“We are looking forward to working with Google on News Showcase. This, we believe, is one of many significant steps by Google towards creating a sustainable, mutually beneficial environment for both Google and independent journalism to thrive,” says Sanjay Sindhwani, CEO of Indian Express Online, one of largest print publishers in India.

Our current Indian news partners for Google News Showcase


“We are delighted to be a launch partner for Google News Showcase in India. The product comes at an opportune time for The India Today Group as we work to reach new readers and further engage our current readers with the stories that matter most to them,” says Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson, India Today Group, one of the largest national broadcaster and magazine publishers in India. “Over 45 years, The India Today Group has created a deep legacy of credibility, excellence, trust, and bi-partisanship. We want to be constantly innovating in the ways that we approach how our content is featured across the web. We look forward to working closely with Google and reaching a much wider audience for our brand of journalism."

“As an established media house, engaging with our audiences through quality content in convenient and innovative ways is a huge area of focus for us. We are pleased to partner with Showcase to build on the same and help us access new users”, says Paras Sharma, Head of News Partnerships, HT Digital Streams Ltd, one of the largest print publishers in India.

"This is a wonderful product from Google that signals a positive shift in the thought process benefitting both publishers and readers. This interesting new partnership with Google will give an opportunity to the publishers to showcase the best of their content in a specially designed window apart from getting it discovered through traditional search engine approach. Publishers get an opportunity to find new audiences for their premium content and users get an enhanced news experience", says Vikas Handu, Vice President Digital Strategy, India TV, a leading news broadcaster in India.

Expanded support through Google News Initiative

News Showcase is just one part of our overall commitment to the Indian news ecosystem. Today we’re announcing that we are expanding our Google News Initiative efforts in India as well.  

First, we’re stepping up our work to strengthen digital skills in newsrooms and journalism schools across India. Over the next three years, with increased support from the News Lab, we’ll train 50,000 journalists and journalism students. We’ll focus on digital tools to aid verification and combat misinformation online, and we’ll expand our programs to connect Indian journalists and fact-checkers.

Second, we are introducing several new programs to help small and mid-sized publications achieve financial sustainability – all part of the GNI Digital Growth Program, which has already trained executives at 100 Indian news organizations since launching last year. The new programs include:

  • New business training workshops, delivered virtually, to help news organizations address the needs of their audiences, grow their readership and deepen reader engagement. These workshops will be available for free to Indian publishers, alongside our existing workshops to support business success for news organizations. 

  • The GNI Advertising Lab, which includes training sessions and implementation support to help more than 800 small and mid-sized Indian news organizations grow their digital ad revenue. 

  • The GNI Transformation Lab, a more comprehensive program for 20 local small and mid-sized Indian news organizations to help them succeed online.

"The insights and business direction provided through the interactive sessions as part of the Google News Initiative [Digital Growth Program] were eye opening for the team. We are excited and thankful that a similar scaled program is being launched to further help us keep pace with the changes in the publishing landscape,” said Harisha Bhat, CTO of Udayavani, a regional news organization in Karnataka in South West India.

These new and expanded programs build on years of investment in India. In 2018, we launched the GNI India Training Network in partnership with BoomLive, DataLeads and Internews. To date, it has trained over 25,000 Indian journalists in 10 languages, touching more than 1,000 news organizations and more than 700 universities. In response to COVID-19, we provided financial support to 228 news organizations in India through the GNI Journalism Emergency Relief Fund. And Indian publishers including The Hindu, Bloomberg Quint and Chambal Media have benefited from GNI programs like the GNI Innovation Challenges, YouTube Innovation funding and the GNI Subscriptions Labs.

The Indian news industry and its journalists have embraced technology to engage with readers and make data-driven decisions to improve their business and reporting efforts. We believe it’s important that digital platforms contribute to a sustainable, independent and diverse news ecosystem, working with journalists, news outlets and news associations. We’re proud to be strengthening our commitment at this critical time.  

Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Country Head & Vice President, India, and Brad Bender, VP of Product Management

An update on our COVID response priorities

 Our teams at Google continue to support the tireless work of hospitals, nonprofits, and public health service providers across the country. Right now, we’re focused on three priority areas: ensuring people can access the latest and most authoritative information; amplifying vital safety and vaccination messages; and providing financial backing for affected communities, health authorities and other organizations.

Providing critical and authoritative information

On all our platforms, we’re taking steps to surface the critical information families and communities need to care for their own health and look after others.

Searches on the COVID-19 vaccine display key information around side effects, effectiveness, and registration details, while treatment-related queries surface guidance from ministry resources

When people ask questions about vaccines on Google Search, they see information panels that display the latest updates on vaccine safety, efficacy and side-effects, plus registration information that directs users to the Co-WIN website. You will also find information about prevention, self-care, and treatment under the Prevention and Treatment tab, in easy-to-understand language sourced from authorised medical sources and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. 

On YouTube we’re surfacing authoritative information in a set of playlists, about vaccines, preventing the spread of COVID-19, and facts from experts on COVID-19 care.

Our YouTube India channel features a set of playlists to share tips and information on COVID-19 care 

Testing and vaccination center locations

In addition to showing 2,500 testing centers on Search and Maps, we’re now sharing the locations of over 23,000 vaccination centers nationwide, in English and eight Indian languages. And we’re continuing to work closely with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to make more vaccination center information available to users throughout India.

Searching for vaccines in Maps and Search now shows over 23,000 vaccination centers across the country, in English and eight Indian languages

Pilot on hospital beds and medical oxygen availability

We know that some of the most crucial information people are searching for is the availability of hospital beds and access to medical oxygen. To help them find answers more easily, we’re testing a new feature using the Q&A function in Maps that enables people to ask about and share local information on availability of beds and medical oxygen in select locations. As this will be user generated content and not provided by authorised sources, it may be required to verify the accuracy and freshness of the information before utilizing it.

Amplifying vital safety and vaccination messages

As well as providing authoritative answers to queries, we’re using our channels to help extend the reach of health information campaigns. That includes the ‘Get the Facts’ around vaccines campaign, to encourage people to focus on authoritative information and content for vaccines. We’re also surfacing important safety messages through promotions on the Google homepage, Doodles and reminders within our apps and services.

Via the Google Search homepage and reminders within our apps and services, we are reminding people to stay safe and stay masked, and get authoritative information on vaccines

Supporting health authorities, organizations, and affected communities

Since the second wave began, we’ve been running an internal donation campaign to raise funds for nonprofit organizations helping those most in need, including GiveIndia, Charities Aid Foundation India, GOONJ, and United Way of Mumbai. This campaign has raised over $4.6 million (INR 33 crore) to date, and continues to generate much-needed support for relief efforts. 

We recognize that many more nonprofits need donations, and that Indians are eager to help where they can—so we’ve rolled out a COVID Aid campaign on Google Pay, featuring non-profit organizations like GiveIndia, Charities Aid Foundation, Goonj, Save the Children, Seeds, UNICEF India  (National NGOs) and United Way. We want to thank all our Google Pay users who have contributed to these organisations, and we hope this effort will make a difference where it matters most. 

On Google Pay people can contribute funds to non-profit organizations involved in COVID response

As India battles this devastating wave, we’ll keep doing all we can to support the selfless individuals and committed organizations on the front lines of the response. There’s a long way to go—but standing together in solidarity, working together with determination, we can and will turn the tide.  

Posted by the Covid Response team, Google India

New safety section in Google Play will give transparency into how apps use data



We work closely with developers to keep Google Play a safe, trusted space for billions of people to enjoy the latest Android apps. Today, we’re pre-announcing an upcoming safety section in Google Play that will help people understand the data an app collects or shares, if that data is secured, and additional details that impact privacy and security.


Developers agree that people should have transparency and control over their data. And they want simple ways to communicate app safety that are easy to understand and help users to make informed choices about how their data is handled. Developers also want to give additional context to explain data use and how safety practices could affect the app experience. So in addition to the data an app collects or shares, we’re introducing new elements to highlight whether:

  1. The app has security practices, like data encryption

  2. The app follows our Families policy

  3. The app needs this data to function or if users have choice in sharing it

  4. The app’s safety section is verified by an independent third-party

  5. The app enables users to request data deletion, if they decide to uninstall


This can be a big change, so we’re sharing this in advance and building with developers alongside us.


What this section will include


Among other things, we’ll ask developers to share: 

  • What type of data is collected and stored: Examples of potential options are approximate or precise location, contacts, personal information (e.g. name, email address), photos & videos, audio files, and storage files

  • How the data is used: Examples of potential options are app functionality and personalization 


Similar to app details like screenshots and descriptions, developers are responsible for the information disclosed in their section. Google Play will introduce a policy that requires developers to provide accurate information. If we find that a developer has misrepresented the data they’ve provided and is in violation of the policy, we will require the developer to fix it. Apps that don’t become compliant will be subject to policy enforcement.


What you can expect


All apps on Google Play - including Google's own apps - will be required to share this information and provide a privacy policy. 


We’re committed to ensuring that developers have plenty of time to prepare. This summer, we’ll share the new policy requirements and resources, including detailed guidance on app privacy policies. Starting Q2 2022, new app submissions and app updates must include this information.


Target Timeline (Dates subject to change)


In the future, we’ll continue providing new ways to simplify control for users and automate more work for developers.


In the meantime, here are some resources to help you design secure & privacy-friendly apps


We’re excited to advance our partnership with developers to make Google Play a trustworthy platform for everyone.


Posted by Suzanne Frey, VP, Product, Android Security and Privacy

Supporting India during the current COVID crisis

Right now India is going through our most difficult moment in the pandemic thus far. Daily COVID-19 cases continue to set record highs, with hospitals filled to capacity and in need of urgent supplies to cope with the increasing number of patients. 


Our Google community and their families are feeling the devastating impact, too. We’re asking ourselves what more we can do as a company to ensure people get the information and support they need to keep their families and communities healthy and safe.


Today we’re announcing 135 Crore INR ($18 million USD) in new funding for India. This includes two grants from Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, totalling 20 Crore INR ($2.6 million USD). The first is to GiveIndia to provide cash assistance to families hit hardest by the crisis to help with their everyday expenses. The second will go to UNICEF to help get urgent medical supplies, including oxygen and testing equipment, to where it’s needed most in India. It also includes donations from our ongoing employee giving campaign — so far more than 900 Googlers have contributed 3.7 Crore INR ($500,000 USD) for organizations supporting high-risk and marginalized communities. 


This funding also includes increased Ad Grant support for public health information campaigns. Since last year, we’ve helped MyGov and the World Health Organization reach audiences with messages focused on how to stay safe and facts about vaccines. We’re increasing our support today with an additional 112 Crore INR ($15 million) in Ad Grants to local health authorities and nonprofits for more language coverage options.



COVID-19 vaccine information on Search is available in English and eight Indian languages


We know the biggest way we can help is through our core information products like Search and Maps, YouTube and Ads. Our COVID features on Search are available in India, in English and eight Indian languages, and we continue to improve localization and highlight authoritative information. That includes information on where to get testing and vaccines; so far, Maps and Search surface thousands of vaccine sites, and we are working to add tens of thousands more. We’re also collaborating closely with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and with organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support vaccine awareness initiatives. 


On YouTube, we are supporting the government in their vaccine communication strategy, as well as working to raise up authoritative information and reduce misinformation. We recently ran a workshop for 200+ health officials to learn how they can use YouTube to reach audiences across Indian languages with vaccine information. And we’ve added support for public donations for several non-governmental organizations on Google Pay.


I am hopeful that the situation will turn around for our country soon, but as we have learned over the course of this pandemic, hope is not enough. At Google we’ll continue to work with local governments, partners and communities to give people the tools to stay healthy and safe. We’ll get through this tough time together. 


Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Country Head & Vice President, India