Author Archives: Caesar Sengupta

Introducing Tez—a mobile payments and commerce app from Google, made for India first

With more than 300 million smartphone users  and rapidly improving connectivity in India, the internet is becoming a daily part of life for many Indians. That includes messaging friends and family, searching the web for information, reading news, watching music videos, or playing games. But when it comes to paying for things—vegetables, bus fares, splitting the bill at dinner or paying on delivery for something purchased online—those smartphones often go unused. Out instead comes… wads of paper. Indians love cash.

To make digital payments truly work for India, we wanted to build a product that can compete with cash. It needs to be simple, affordable, and work everywhere and for everyone.  So today in India we’re introducing a new mobile app from Google, Tez—a simple and secure way to pay for things, big and small, online and offline. Tez is a payments and commerce app built for India first on top of the country’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) standard.

Here are a few of the features you'll get with Tez

  • Direct, bank-to-bank payments: Tez uses UPI for instant and secure payments, directly to and from bank accounts.

  • “Cash Mode” for nearby transactions: Pay nearby without sharing your private details like bank account or phone number.

  • Tez Shield: Backed by Google’s expertise in data security, Tez works 24/7 to help detect fraud, prevent hacking, and to verify and protect the identity of every user.

  • Tez for Business: Tez for Business is a program for large and small enterprises to connect with consumers inside the Tez app to make payments, share redeemable offers, products and updates.

Introducing Tez. Created by Google, made for India first.

For more detail on Tez and its features, take a look at our India blog post.

We’re just getting started. This is the first step on the long and important journey towards enabling a cashless India—a crucial component of a Digital India.

A new home for Google in Singapore

We opened our first Singapore office in 2007, a tiny space along Collyer Quay occupied by just 24 people. Since then, Asia’s grown, Singapore’s grown and we’ve grown in Singapore. We now need room for 1,000 Googlers working on new products and projects across Asia for our users, customers and partners. And we also want more room for the community around us—the kind of place that’s useful for gatherings of developers, students, founders, and kids to connect with Googlers and, sometimes, even prime ministers and ministers of trade. So we’re excited Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister for Trade and Industry Mr. S. Iswaran could join us at the opening of our new office today. 

Prime Minister Lee and Minister Iswaran at our housewarming
We've moved! We're honored to have Prime Minister Lee and Minister Iswaran join us at our housewarming.
Wefie with Prime Minister Lee and Minister Iswaran -- and a room full of Googlers
Wefie with Prime Minister Lee, Minister Iswaran and a roomful of Googlers
Prime Minister tries out Tilt Brush
Prime Minister Lee tried his hand at painting in 3D space with virtual reality using Tilt Brush. He also explored Ink&Clog's virtual illustration of Singapore's urban landscape. 

As our Asia Pacific headquarters, Googlers here are focused on many areas, industries and countries in the region. We have a growing engineering team, and Googlers working across sales, partnerships, marketing, people operations and many more. We wanted our office to reflect that diversity and regional range, and built it in a way that enables everyone to work together effortlessly. You’ll see that the new space is also designed to inspire Googlers to perform at their best every day. Put together, we believe this fosters collaboration and creativity — the key ingredients for innovation, which in turn is key to our long-term success. 

A brainstorm room at Google Singapore
Googlers are empowered to choose the kind of workspace that best suits their working style and the tasks they need to focus on for the day. There are open spaces for collaboration and more quiet spaces for individual work.
Adventure Cove at Google Singapore
Bringing the Garden City indoors: scientific evidence shows that spaces that evoke nature enhance our physical and mental well-being, so we do our best to bring the outdoors inside.
Diwali at Google Singapore
We encourage Googlers to celebrate occasions like Deepavali. We’re a diverse bunch in Google and getting to know each other’s culture is important to us.
Googleween

And we love to have fun! Here’s one taken of Googlers celebrating Halloween on our rooftop garden.


Nurturing more tech innovators

A passion for solving problems—big and small—through innovation and technology is at the core of everything that we do at Google. Over the past nine years, we’ve contributed to Singapore’s tech community by training young graduates in advertising technology through Digitize, bringing small businesses online with GoGlobal, and growing a pool of data analysts through Squared Data Analytics. 

But we can do more. We feel we can play an important role in inspiring more Singaporeans, especially young Singaporeans, to take up technology and the creative industries as careers. I’m especially inspired whenever I meet young girls and boys who are using technology to solve global challenges in creative and meaningful ways. For example, Marion, Joy, and Sonia, all 18-year-olds from NUS High School, recently wowed our judges at the Google Science Fair with their concept for ‘paint on’ energy storage. We want to encourage many more Singaporeans to become future technologists and leave their mark on the world.  

This is why today, we also announced that we’re bringing Code in the Community to 3,000 young Singaporeans from less well-to-do backgrounds. It’s a multi-year, multi-level computer science and computational thinking course to get even more Singaporean kids excited about the potential of technology. 

We’re partnering with Singapore’s four ethnic Self-Help Groups—the Chinese Development Assistance Council, Singapore Indian Development Association, The Eurasian Association and Yayasan Mendaki—to hold weekend classes for kids aged 8 to 15, with an equal mix of boys and girls. The program, which starts in early 2017, will be run by 21C Girls and Saturday Kids at four Community Centers around the island for three years. Google’s support for Code in the Community is made possible through our Data Center Community Grants and RISE Awards programs. We will share more details when sign-ups open next month.

Code in the Community partners
Singaporean Google engineers with leaders from CDAC, Eurasian Association, MENDAKI and SINDA. From left to right: Jing Lim (Google), Mdm Tuminah Sapawi (CEO, Yayasan MENDAKI), Mr K Barathan (CEO, SINDA), Mr Pok Cheng Chong (Executive Director, CDAC), Mr Alexius A. Pereira (Vice President, The Eurasian Association), Ian Leow (Google)

Each batch of participants and their parents will start off with a visit to our new office where they will hear from Googlers about how they started their careers and what a technical job really has to offer.  We will also be engaging with the community through a series of tech talks, meet-ups and interview workshops that we we hope will give Singaporeans aspiring to pursue a career in tech a head start. 

As a Singaporean, I can’t tell you how excited I am about our new home and welcoming many more of you here. Just imagine the ideas and innovations we’ll see when a greater diversity of Singaporeans develop a passion for technology, and the better and more useful outcomes this will lead to for all. 

Chromebox, now for simpler and better meetings

The best meetings are face-to-face—we can brainstorm openly, collaborate closely and make faster decisions. But these days, we often connect with each other from far-flung locations, coordinating time zones and dialing into conference calls from our phones. Meetings need to catch up with the way we work—they need to be face-to-face, easier to join, and available from anywhere and any device. Starting today, they can be: Any company can upgrade their meeting rooms with a new Chromebox, built on the Chrome principles of speed, simplicity and security.

Chromebox for meetings brings together Google+ Hangouts and Google Apps in an easy-to-manage Chromebox, making it simpler for any company to have high-definition video meetings. Here are a few highlights:

  • Instant meeting room. Chromebox for meetings comes with a blazing-fast Intel Core i7-based Chromebox, a high-definition camera, a combined microphone and speaker unit and a remote control. Set up your entire room in minutes and easily manage all meeting rooms from a web-based management console. All you need is the display in your room, and you’re good to go.
  • Simpler and faster meetings. Walk into the room, click the remote once and you’re instantly in the meeting. No more complex dial-in codes, passcodes or leader PINs. Share your laptop screen wirelessly, no need for any cords and adaptors. Integration with Google Apps makes it easy to invite others and add rooms to video meetings, directly from Google Calendar.
  • Meetings with anyone, anywhere. Up to 15 participants can join the video meeting from other conference rooms, their laptops, tablets or smartphones. Need to meet with a customer who doesn’t use Chromebox for meetings? That’s easy too—all they need is a Gmail account. You can also connect to rooms that have traditional video conferencing systems using a new tool from Vidyo, and participants who prefer phones can join your meeting with a conference call number fromUberConference.
Chromebox meetings

Chromebox for meetings is available in the U.S. today starting at $999, which includes the ASUS Chromebox and everything you need to get going. That means for the same price that companies have typically paid for one meeting room, they'll be able to outfit 10 rooms—or more. CDW and SYNNEX will help bring Chromebox for meetings to customers and resellers, and Chromeboxes from HP and Dell will be available for meetings in the coming months. Later this year, we plan to launch in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K.

Companies like Eventbrite, Gilt, oDesk and Woolworths have been testing Chromebox for meetings, and have told us that they love the simple setup, the ease of use, and being able to see their colleagues in other offices. More importantly, the low price will enable them to extend these benefits to even more employees, rooms and offices. Find out how Chromebox for meetings can help you and your coworkers see eye-to-eye. Happy meetings, everyone!

Source: Google Chrome


The new HP Chromebook, made with Google

We need our computers to be as fast and mobile as we are. We want to work across multiple screens—often at the same time. We want the latest and greatest software and we want to be able to get to our stuff from wherever we are. Chromebooks offer all of that, making computers that are simpler, more secure and more affordable, for everyone.

Earlier today, HP introduced the HP Chromebook 11. Designed and built in partnership with our friends at HP, it has all of the speed, simplicity and security benefits you'd expect from a Chromebook, and some unique design elements that address many of the challenges people face with computers today.

HP Chromebook 11

First, a laptop should be light and mobile. So the new Chromebook is really thin with no extra fluff. It weighs in at just over two pounds—one of the lightest laptops on the market. There are also no sharp edges so nothing digs into your wrists while you type. And when you’re traveling, you don’t need to throw an extra charger into your bag. The HP Chromebook 11 is powered by a micro-USB charger, which can also be used to juice up your Android phone or tablet.

Second, a computer should look good—something you’re proud to take out at a coffee shop. So the new Chromebook has a sleek, distinctive and super simple look. The fanless design means it doesn’t need any grills for venting. And it comes in a variety of colors to match your mood (or your wardrobe).

And there are a bunch of other things that we hope will make your computing experience even more awesome:

  • Brilliant display. Often when folks gather around a screen, everyone tries to gently nudge the computer in their own direction so they can see better. No more nudging. The new Chromebook's screen has a 176-degree viewing angles so you can see even when looking at it almost completely sideways. And the super bright display brings all of your favorite photos, shows and videos to life.
  • Light but sturdy. We wanted the Chromebook to hold up well against everyday bumps and bruises. So it has a magnesium frame that makes it incredibly sturdy. You can hold it from a single corner without it bending or flexing.
  • Finely-tuned speakers. Many computers have speakers on the bottom, which is great if you have ears in your lap. Instead, the speakers on the new Chromebook are under the keyboard, which means the sound is crisp, clear and pointed up towards your ears.
  • Goodies built-in. And, of course, many Google apps come built-in, including 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage (free for two years) and a 60-day free trial of Google Play Music All Access.


This Chromebook is crafted with the same obsessive attention to detail as the Chromebook Pixel. But we worked hard with HP to keep the price low: the new HP Chromebook 11 is available for just $279.

Look for it starting today at Best Buy, Amazon, Google Play and HP Shopping in the U.S., as well as at Currys, PC World and many other retailers in the U.K. It will be available in other countries that sell Chromebooks in time for the holidays.

So if you’ve been looking for a computer that makes it easier to get stuff done (and look good doing it), we hope you give the new HP Chromebook 11 a try—or add it to your gift list this holiday season. We designed it to make computing faster, simpler and more secure, for everyone.

Source: Google Chrome