Author Archives: Google Developers

Finding courage and inspiration in the developer community

Posted by Monika Janota

How do we empower women in tech and equip them with the skills to help them become true leaders? One way is learning from others' successes and failures. Web GDEs—Debbie O'Brien, Julia Miocene, and Glafira Zhur—discuss the value of one to one mentoring and the impact it has made on their own professional and personal development.

A 2019 study showed that only 25% of keynote speakers at tech events are women, meanwhile 70% of female speakers mentioned being the only woman on a conference panel. One way of changing that is by running programs and workshops with the aim of empowering women and providing them with the relevant soft skills training, including public speaking, content creation, and leadership. Among such programs are the Women Developer Academy (WDA) and the Road to GDE, both run by Google's developer communities.

With more than 1000 graduates around the world, WDA is a program run by Women Techmakers for professional IT practitioners. To equip women in tech with speaking and presentation skills, along with confidence and courage, training sessions, workshops, and mentoring meetings are organized. Road to GDE, on the other hand, is a three-month mentoring program created to support people from historically underrepresented groups in tech on their path to becoming experts. What makes both programs special is the fact that they're based on a unique connection between mentor and mentee, direct knowledge sharing, and an individualized approach.

Photo of Julia Miocene speaking at a conference Julia Miocene

Some Web GDE community members have had a chance to be part of the mentoring programs for women as both mentors and mentees. Frontend developers Julia Miocene and Glafira Zhur are relatively new to the GDE program. They became Google Developers Experts in October 2021 and January 2022 respectively, after graduating from the first edition of both the Women Developer Academy and the Road to GDE; whilst Debbie O'Brien has been a member of the community and an active mentor for both programs for several years. They have all shared their experiences with the programs in order to encourage other women in tech to believe in themselves, take a chance, and to become true leaders.

Different paths, one goal

Although all three share an interest in frontend development, each has followed a very different path. Glafira Zhur, now a team leader with 12 years of professional experience, originally planned to become a musician, but decided to follow her other passion instead. A technology fan thanks to her father, she was able to reinstall Windows at the age of 11. Julia Miocene, after more than ten years in product design, was really passionate about CSS. She became a GDE because she wanted to work with Chrome and DevTools. Debbie is a Developer Advocate working in the frontend area, with a strong passion for user experience and performance. For her, mentoring is a way of giving back to the community, helping other people achieve their dreams, and become the programmers they want to be. At one point while learning JavaScript, she was so discouraged she wanted to give it up, but her mentor convinced her she could be successful. Now she's returning the favor.

Photo of Debbie O'Brien and another woman in a room smiling at the camera

Debbie O'Brien

As GDEs, Debbie, Glafira, and Julia all mention that the most valuable part of becoming experts is the chance to meet people with similar interests in technology, to network, and to provide early feedback for the web team. Mentoring, on the other hand, enables them to create, it boosts their confidence and empowers them to share their skills and knowledge—regardless of whether they're a mentor or a mentee.

Sharing knowledge

A huge part of being a mentee in Google's programs is learning how to share knowledge with other developers and help them in the most effective way. Many WDA and Road to GDE participants become mentors themselves. According to Julia, it's important to remember that a mentor is not a teacher—they are much more. The aim of mentoring, she says, is to create something together, whether it's an idea, a lasting connection, a piece of knowledge, or a plan for the future.

Glafira mentioned that she learned to perceive social media in a new way—as a hub for sharing knowledge, no matter how small the piece of advice might seem. It's because, she says, even the shortest Tweet may help someone who's stuck on a technical issue that they might not be able to resolve without such content being available online. Every piece of knowledge is valuable. Glafira adds that, "Social media is now my tool, I can use it to inspire people, invite them to join the activities I organize. It's not only about sharing rough knowledge, but also my energy."

Working with mentors who have successfully built an audience for their own channels allows the participants to learn more about the technical aspects of content creation—how to choose topics that might be interesting for readers, set up the lighting in the studio, or prepare an engaging conference speech.

Learning while teaching

From the other side of the mentor—mentee relationship, Debbie O'Brien says the best thing about mentoring is seeing the mentees grow and succeed: "We see in them something they can't see in themselves, we believe in them, and help guide them to achieve their goals. The funny thing is that sometimes the advice we give them is also useful for ourselves, so as mentors we end up learning a lot from the experience too."

TV screenin a room showing and image od Glafira Zhur

Glafira Zhur

Both Glafira and Julia state that they're willing to mentor other women on their way to success. Asked what is the most important learning from a mentorship program, they mention confidence—believing in yourself is something they want for every female developer out there.

Growing as a part of the community

Both Glafira and Julia mentioned that during the programs they met many inspiring people from their local developer communities. Being able to ask others for help, share insights and doubts, and get feedback was a valuable lesson for both women.

Mentors may become role models for the programs' participants. Julia mentioned how important it was for her to see someone else succeed and follow in their footsteps, to map out exactly where you want to be professionally, and how you can get there. This means learning not just from someone else's failures, but also from their victories and achievements.

Networking within the developer community is also a great opportunity to grow your audience by visiting other contributors' podcasts and YouTube channels. Glafira recalls that during the Academy, she received multiple invites and had an opportunity to share her knowledge on different channels.

Overall, what's even more important than growing your audience is finding your own voice. As Debbie states: "We need more women speaking at conferences, sharing knowledge online, and being part of the community. So I encourage you all to be brave and follow your dreams. I believe in you, so now it's time to start believing in yourself."

How to use App Engine Memcache in Flask apps (Module 12)

Posted by Wesley Chun

Background

In our ongoing Serverless Migration Station series aimed at helping developers modernize their serverless applications, one of the key objectives for Google App Engine developers is to upgrade to the latest language runtimes, such as from Python 2 to 3 or Java 8 to 17. Another objective is to help developers learn how to move away from App Engine legacy APIs (now called "bundled services") to Cloud standalone equivalent services. Once this has been accomplished, apps are much more portable, making them flexible enough to:

In today's Module 12 video, we're going to start our journey by implementing App Engine's Memcache bundled service, setting us up for our next move to a more complete in-cloud caching service, Cloud Memorystore. Most apps typically rely on some database, and in many situations, they can benefit from a caching layer to reduce the number of queries and improve response latency. In the video, we add use of Memcache to a Python 2 app that has already migrated web frameworks from webapp2 to Flask, providing greater portability and execution options. More importantly, it paves the way for an eventual 3.x upgrade because the Python 3 App Engine runtime does not support webapp2. We'll cover both the 3.x and Cloud Memorystore ports next in Module 13.

Got an older app needing an update? We can help with that.

Adding use of Memcache

The sample application registers individual web page "visits," storing visitor information such as the IP address and user agent. In the original app, these values are stored immediately, and then the most recent visits are queried to display in the browser. If the same user continuously refreshes their browser, each refresh constitutes a new visit. To discourage this type of abuse, we cache the same user's visit for an hour, returning the same cached list of most recent visits unless a new visitor arrives or an hour has elapsed since their initial visit.

Below is pseudocode representing the core part of the app that saves new visits and queries for the most recent visits. Before, you can see how each visit is registered. After the update, the app attempts to fetch these visits from the cache. If cached results are available and "fresh" (within the hour), they're used immediately, but if cache is empty, or a new visitor arrives, the current visit is stored as before, and this latest collection of visits is cached for an hour. The bolded lines represent the new code that manages the cached data.

Adding App Engine Memcache usage to sample app

Wrap-up

Today's "migration" began with the Module 1 sample app. We added a Memcache-based caching layer and arrived at the finish line with the Module 12 sample app. To practice this on your own, follow the codelab doing it by-hand while following the video. The Module 12 app will then be ready to upgrade to Cloud Memorystore should you choose to do so.

In Fall 2021, the App Engine team extended support of many of the bundled services to next-generation runtimes, meaning you are no longer required to migrate to Cloud Memorystore when porting your app to Python 3. You can continue using Memcache in your Python 3 app so long as you retrofit the code to access bundled services from next-generation runtimes.

If you do want to move to Cloud Memorystore, stay tuned for the Module 13 video or try its codelab to get a sneak peek. All Serverless Migration Station content (codelabs, videos, source code [when available]) can be accessed at its open source repo. While our content initially focuses on Python users, we hope to one day cover other language runtimes, so stay tuned. For additional video content, check out our broader Serverless Expeditions series.

Celebrating leaders in AAPI communities

Posted by Google Developer Studio

In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are speaking with mentors and leaders in tech and who identify as part of the AAPI community. Many of the influential figures we feature are involved with and help champion inclusivity programs like Google Developer Experts and Google Developer Student Clubs, while others work on leading in product areas like TensorFlow and drive impact through their line of work and communities.

On that note, we are honoring this year’s theme of “Advancing Leaders Through Collaboration” by learning more about the power of mentorship, advice they’ve received from other leaders, and their biggest accomplishments.

Read more about leads in the AAPI community below.

Ben Hong

Senior Staff Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

There is a lot of advice out there on how to get the most out of your career by climbing the ladder and getting leadership roles. Before you embark on that journey, first ask yourself the question "Why do I want this?"

Becoming a leader comes with a lot of glitz and glamor, but the reality is that it carries a huge weight of responsibility because the decisions and actions you take as a leader will impact the lives of those around you in significant ways you can't foresee.

As a result, the key to becoming the best leader you can be is to:

  1. Establish what your values and principles are
  2. Align them to the actions you take each and every day

Because at the end of the day, leaders are often faced with difficult decisions that lead to an uncertain future. And without core values and principles to guide you as an individual, you run the risk of being easily swayed by short term trade offs that could result in a long term loss.

This world needs leaders who can stand their ground against the temptations of short-term wins and make the best decisions they can while fighting for those that follow them. If you stand firm in your values and listen to those around you, you'll be able to create profound impact in your community.

Taha Bouhsine

Data Scientist and GDSCUIZ Lead

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

Create a journey worth taking. You will face many challenges and a new set of problems. You will start asking a lot of questions as everything seems to be unfamiliar.

Things get much lighter if you are guided by a mentor, as you will get guidance on how to act in this new chapter of life. In your early days, invest as much as you can in building and nurturing a team, as it will save you a lot of time along the road. Surround yourself with real people who take the initiative, get to the action, and are willing to grow and learn, nurture their skills and guide them towards your common goal. Don't try to be a people pleaser as it's an impossible mission.

Your actions will offend some people one way or the other. That’s ok as you should believe in your mission, create a clear plan with well-defined tasks and milestones, and be firm with your decision. In the end, responsibility is yours to bear, so at least take it on something you decided, not something that was forced upon you by others.

Finally, when there is fire, look for ways to put it out. Take care of your soul, and enjoy the journey!

Huyen Tue Dao

Android Developer, Trello

What do you love most about being a part of the developer community?

It has been the most rewarding and critical part of my career to meet other developers, learning and sharing knowledge and getting to know them as human beings.

Development is a job of constant learning, whether it is the latest technology, trends, issues, and challenges or the day-to-day intricacies and nuances of writing specialized code and solving problems in efficient and elegant ways. I don't think I'd have the tools to solve issues large and small without the sharing of knowledge and experience of the developer community. If you're having a problem of any kind, chances are that someone has had the same challenges. You can take comfort that you can probably find the answer or at least find people that can help you. You can also feel confident that if you discovered something new or learned important lessons, someone will want to hear what you have to say.

I love seeing and being part of this cycle and interchange; as we pool our experience, our knowledge, and insights, we become stronger and more skilled as a community. I would not be the engineer or person that I am without the opportunities of this exchange.

Just as important, though, is the camaraderie and support of those who do what I do and love it. I have been so fortunate to have been in communities that have been open and welcoming, ready to make connections and form networks, eager to celebrate victories and commiserate with challenges. Regardless of the technical and personal challenges of the everyday that may get to me, there are people that understand and can support me and provide brilliantly diverse perspectives of different industries, countries, cultures, and ages.

Malak Magdy Ali

Google Developer Student Club Lead at Canadian International College, Egypt

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

The best piece of advice I can give to new leaders is to have empathy. Having empathy will make you understand people’s actions and respect their feelings. This will make for stronger teams.

Also, give others a space to lead. Involve your team in making decisions; they come up with great ideas that can help you and teammates learn from each other. In this process, trust is also built, resulting in a better quality product.

Finally, don't underestimate yourself. Do your best and involve your team to discuss the overall quality of your work and let them make recommendations.

Helping you build across devices, platforms, and the world

Posted by Jeanine Banks, VP & General Manager of Developer X & Head of Developer Relations

We’re thrilled to be back at the Shoreline Amphitheatre hosting Google I/O this week. It’s great to connect with you all from around the world virtually and in person.

I/O is our love letter to you, the developer. Developers are the engine which enables the information revolution. But more than that, it’s developers who turn information and ideas into code that powers the way we learn, work, communicate, and play.

A few decades ago, building a digital experience meant publishing a static website and reaching thousands of people on their desktops. Today, it means a lightning-fast, interactive experience across browsers, desktops, phones, tablets, virtual assistants, TVs, gaming consoles, cars, watches, and more. People expect new features faster than ever -- all while we respect and uphold the highest standards for privacy and safety.

To help you deal with the complexity and rising expectations, we want to bring simplicity to the challenges you face. This week at I/O, we shared the beginning of a long-term effort to connect our developer products to work even better together, and provide more guidance and best practices to optimize your end-to-end workflow. Here are just a few highlights of what we announced in the developer keynote:

  • The new ARCore Geospatial API, that lets you place AR content at real-world locations in 87 countries without physically being there.
  • Modern Android Development for the best experiences on any screen, including new Jetpack Compose support for WearOS and tablets, an upgrade to Android Studio with Live Edit, and much more.
  • Chrome DevTools’ new Performance Insights panel and support coming in WebAssembly for managed programming languages like Dart, Java, and Kotlin.
  • Flutter 3, our open source multi-platform UI framework, now supports six platforms for building beautiful applications from a single code base.
  • Firebase Crashlytics seamlessly integrated across Android Studio, Flutter, and Google Play for consistent and actionable crash reporting.
  • Cloud Run jobs to execute batch data transformation, administrative tasks or scheduled jobs, and AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, our new fully managed, relational database that’s more than 4x faster than standard PostgreSQL for transactional workloads.
  • Exciting research in AI-assisted coding and the AI for Code (AI4Code) challenge on Kaggle in partnership with X, the moonshot factory.

Watch the developer keynote or this recap video to get a fuller taste of what's new this year across many of our platforms including Android, ARCore, Chrome OS, Cloud, Flutter, Firebase, Google Play, Kaggle, Machine Learning, and Web Platform:

Whether you are looking to build your first app, expand what your products can do, or leverage ML easily and responsibly, we hope you will be inspired by the vast space in front of you to make your ideas a reality and make people’s lives better.

Introducing the Google Wallet API

Posted by Petra Cross, Engineer, Google Wallet and Jose Ugia, Google Developer Relations Engineer

Google Pay API for Passes is now called Google Wallet API

Formerly known as Google Pay API for Passes, the Google Wallet API lets you digitize everything from boarding passes to loyalty programs, and engage your customers with notifications and real-time updates.

New features in Google Wallet API

Support for Generic Pass Type

The Google Pay API for Passes supported 7 types of passes: offers, loyalty cards, gift cards, event tickets, boarding passes, transit tickets and vaccine cards. But what if you want to issue passes or cards that do not fit into any of these categories, such as membership cards, or insurance cards?

We are thrilled to announce support for generic passes to the Google Wallet API so you can customize your pass objects to adapt to your program characteristics. The options are endless. If it is a card and has some text, a barcode or a QR code, it can be saved as a generic card.

You now have the flexibility to control the look and design of the card itself, by providing a card template that can contain up to 3 rows with 1-3 fields per row. You can also configure a number of attributes such as the barcode, QR code, or a hero image. Check out our documentation to learn more about how to create generic passes.

While generic passes can be used to mimic the appearance of any existing supported pass type (such as a loyalty card), we recommend you to continue to use specialized pass types when available. For example, when you use the boarding pass type for boarding passes your users receive flight delay notifications.

Grouping passes and mixing pass types

With the new Google Wallet API, you can also group passes to offer a better experience to your users when multiple passes are needed. For example, you can group the entry ticket, a parking pass, and food vouchers for a concert.

In your user’s list of passes, your users see a pass tile with a badge showing the number of items in the group. When they tap on this tile, a carousel with all passes appears, allowing them to easily swipe between all passes in the group.


Here is an example JSON Web Token payload showing one offer and one event ticket, mixed together and sharing the same groupingId. Later, if you need to add or remove passes to/from the group, you can use the REST API to update the grouping information.

{

  "iss": "OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS",

  "aud": "google",

  "typ": "savetowallet",

  "iat": "UNIX_TIME",

  "origins": [],

  "payload": {

    "offerObjects": [

      {

        "classId": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.OFFER_CLASS_ID",

        "id": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.OFFER_ID",

        "groupingInfo": {

          "groupingId": "groupId1",

          "sortIndex": 2

        }

      }

    ],

    "eventTicketObjects": [

      {

        "classId": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.EVENT_CLASS_ID",

        "id": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.EVENT_ID",

        "groupingInfo": {

          "groupingId": "groupId1",

          "sortIndex": 1

        }

      }

    ] 

  }

}


A note about Google Pay API for Passes:

Although we are introducing the Google Wallet API, all existing developer integrations with the previous Google Pay Passes API will continue to work. When the Google Wallet app is launched in just a few weeks, make sure to use the new “Add to Google Wallet” button in the updated button guidelines.

We’re really excited to build a great digital wallet experience with you, and can’t wait to see how you use the Google Wallet API to enhance your user experience.

Learn more

Simpler Google Wallet integration for Android developers

Posted by Petra Cross, Engineer, Google Wallet and Jose Ugia, Google Developer Relations Engineer

Today more than ever, consumers expect to be able to digitize their physical wallet, from payments and loyalty to tickets and IDs. At Google I/O we announced Google Wallet, which allows users to do exactly that. Consumers can securely store and manage their payment and loyalty cards, board a flight, access a gym and much more, all with just their Android phone.

For Android developers, who manage their own digital passes, Google Wallet offers a fast and secure entry point, especially when quick access is needed. Google Wallet will be quickly accessible from the device lock screen on Pixel devices and from the pulldown shade. Your users will be able to quickly access their passes when they need them - all in one place.

Integrating with Google Wallet became even easier and more flexible. We’ve summarized the news of what you can expect as an Android developer.

New Android SDK

The existing Android SDK supports saving three types of passes: offers, loyalty cards, and gift cards. You asked us to add support for other pass types, and we’ve heard you. Today, we are announcing a new, more extensible API and Android SDK, that in addition to tickets, boarding passes, and transit tickets, and additional pass types, includes support for the new generic pass, which lets your users store any pass or card to Google Wallet. The Android SDK lets you create passes using JSON or JSON Web Token as a payload without a backend integration.

Using the Android SDK is straightforward. First, you create a payload with information about the pass. You can either build it directly in your Android app, or retrieve it from your backend stack. Then, you call the savePasses or savePassesJwt method in the "PayClient" to add the pass to Google Wallet.

Here is how you define and save a sample generic pass object:

{

  "id": "ISSUER_ID.OBJECT_ID",

  "classId": "CLASS_ID",

  "genericType": "GENERIC_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED",

  "cardTitle": {

    "defaultValue": {

      "language": "en",

      "value": "Your Program Name"

    }

  },

  "header": {

    "defaultValue": {

      "language": "en",

      "value": "Alex McJacobs"

    }

  }

}


private val addToGoogleWalletRequestCode = 1000

private val walletClient: PayClient = Pay.getClient(application)

private val jwtString = "" // Fetch a previously created JWT with pass data

walletClient.savePassesJwt(jwtString, this, addToGoogleWalletRequestCode)

Once your app calls savePassesJwt, the process guides your users through the flow of adding a pass to Google Wallet, and allows them to preview the pass before confirming the save operation.

Developer documentation, samples and codelabs

You can find the new Wallet API documentation on developers.google.com/wallet. We customized our developer guides for each pass type to make all the information easily accessible for your specific needs. You will also find plenty of code samples demonstrating how to check for availability of the Google Wallet API on the Android device, how to handle errors, and how to add the “Add to Google Wallet” button to your app.

Don’t forget to play with our interactive passes visual demo, which lets you fill in the fields and create your own custom pass prototype without writing a single line of code. The tool also generates code samples that you can use to build this pass’ data structures which we call “classes” and “objects”.

We’re really excited to build a great digital wallet experience with you, and can’t wait to see how you use the Google Wallet API to enrich your customer experience. Take a look at our hands-on workshop "Digitize any wallet object with the Google Wallet API" to see a full integration tutorial on Android.

Learn more

Manage your passes from Google Pay and Wallet Console

Posted by Ryan Novas, Product Manager, Google Pay’s Business Console and Jose Ugia, Developer Relations Engineer, Google Pay

Author Picture

Today, we are introducing the Google Pay & Wallet Console, a platform that helps developers discover, integrate with, and manage Google Pay and Google Wallet features for their businesses. Integrating Google Pay and Google Wallet products has become easier and faster, with features like a common business profile and a unified dashboard. Check out the new Google Wallet section in the console’s left-hand navigation bar, where you can manage all your tickets, loyalty programs, offers and other passes resources from one place. Google Pay & Wallet Console features a more familiar and intuitive user interface that helps you reuse common bits of information, like your business information, and lets you easily browse and discover products, such as the Online API.

The new Google Wallet section in Google Pay & Wallet Console lets you request access to the API and manage your passes alongside other Google Pay and Google Wallet resources.


You can also manage authentication keys for your Smart Tap integration directly from the console, and let customers use eligible passes saved to Google Pay by simply holding their phones to NFC point-of-sale terminals.

Visit Google Pay & Wallet Console today, and start managing your existing products, or discover and integrate with new ones.

Here is what early users are saying about managing passes in the console:

“The cleaner and consistent look of Google Pay & Wallet Console helps us manage our Google Pay and Google Wallet resources more intuitively." Or Maoz, Senior Director of R&D at EngagedMedia said.

The user management additions also helped EngagedMedia better represent their team in the console:

“The new user roles and controls on Google Pay & Wallet Console help us handle permissions more intuitively and accurately, and allow us to assign roles that better reflect our team structure more easily.”

We are committed to continuously evolving Google Pay & Wallet Console to make it your go-to place to discover and manage Google Pay and Google Wallet integrations. We’d love to hear about your experience. You can share feedback with us from the “Feedback” section in the console. We’re looking forward to learning how we can make Google Pay and Google Wallet even more helpful for you in the future.

Learn more

Want to learn more?

Make the world your canvas with the ARCore Geospatial API

Posted by Bilawal Sidhu, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps and Eric Lai, Group Product Manager, ARCore

ARCore, our AR developer platform, works across billions of devices, providing developers with simple yet powerful tools to build immersive experiences that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds.

In 2019, we launched the ARCore Cloud Anchors API for developers to anchor content to specific locations and design experiences that can be shared over time by multiple people across many different devices. Since then, we’ve been listening to developer feedback on how to make it easier to create and deploy AR experiences at scale.

Today, we’re taking a leap forward by launching the ARCore Geospatial API in ARCore SDKs for Android and iOS across all compatible ARCore-enabled devices. This API is available now at no cost to download and opens up nearly 15 years of our understanding of the world through Google Maps to help developers build AR experiences that are more immersive, richer and more useful.

The Geospatial API provides access to global localization — the same technology that has been powering Live View in Google Maps since 2019, providing people with helpful AR powered arrows and turn-by-turn directions. Based on the Visual Positioning Service (VPS) with tens of billions of images in Street View, developers can now anchor content by latitude, longitude and altitude in over 87 countries, without being there or having to scan the physical space, saving significant time and resources.

Using machine learning to compute a 3D point-cloud of the environment from Google Street View imagery

For end users, discovering and interacting with AR is faster and more accurate as images from the scanned environment are instantaneously matched against our model of the world. This model is built using advanced machine-learning techniques, which extract trillions of 3D points from Street View images that are then used to compute the device position and orientation in less than a second. In other words, users can be anywhere Street View is available, and just by pointing their camera, their device understands exactly where it is, which way it is pointed and where the AR content should appear, almost immediately.

We’ve been working with early access partners like the NBA, Snap, Lyft, and more to explore and build applications for different industries, including education, entertainment and utility. For example, micro mobility companies Bird, Lime and WeMo are using the API to remove friction from parking e-scooters and e-bikes, adding pinpoint accuracy so riders know exactly when their vehicle is in a valid parking spot. Lime has been piloting the experience in London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Bordeaux, Madrid, and San Diego.

Bird (left) and Lime (right) use the ARCore Geospatial API to enable more precise location-based AR experiences

Telstra and Accenture are using the API to help sports fans and concertgoers find their seats, concession stands and restrooms at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia. DOCOMO and Curiosity are building a new game that lets you fend off virtual dragons with robot-companions in front of iconic Tokyo landmarks.


Telstra and Accenture (left) and DOCOMO (right) use the ARCore Geospatial API to create new, entertaining AR experiences

To help you get started, we’re also releasing two open source demo apps to clone and extend into your own applications. Balloon Pop lets people place and use balloons as targets around the world, together and at the same time. Pocket Garden lets you adorn your neighborhood with a colorful AR community garden.


Balloon Pop (left) and Pocket Garden (right) are open source demo apps that showcase the ARCore Geospatial API

With the introduction of the ARCore Geospatial API we're providing the foundation for building world scale AR experiences. Get started today at g.co/ARCore. We’re excited to see what you create when the world is your canvas!

New flexible tools to grow your subscription business

Posted by Steve Hartford, Product Manager, Google Play

Illustrated image with light blue background and Google Play iconography

Digital subscriptions continue to be one of the fastest growing ways for developers to monetize on Google Play. As the subscriptions business model evolves, many developers have asked us for more flexibility and less complexity in how they sell subscriptions.

To meet those needs, we've reimagined the developer experience for selling subscriptions on Play. Today, we’re launching new subscription capabilities and a new Console UI to help you grow your business. At its foundation, we’ve separated what the subscription benefits are from how you sell the subscription. For each subscription, you can now configure multiple base plans and offers. This allows you to sell your subscription in multiple ways, reducing operational costs by removing the need to create and manage an ever-increasing number of SKUs.

You may have already noticed the change in Play Console as we’ve taken existing subscription SKUs and separated them into subscriptions, base plans, and offers. The new subscriptions configuration behaves as before, with no immediate need to update your apps or backend integrations.

Example subscription configuration

Example of a subscription configuration

More flexibility to improve reach, conversion, and retention

Each base plan in a subscription defines a different billing period and renewal type. For example, you can create a subscription with a monthly auto-renewing plan, an annual auto-renewing plan, and a 1-month prepaid plan.

Prepaid plans are an entirely new option that provides users with access to benefits for a fixed duration. Users can extend this access by purchasing top-ups in your app, or in the Play Store. Prepaid plans allow you to reach users in regions where pay-as-you-go is standard, including India and Southeast Asia. They can also provide an alternative for users not ready to purchase an auto-renewing subscription.

A base plan can have multiple offers supporting different stages of the subscription lifecycle — whether to acquire new subscribers, incentivize upgrades, or retain existing subscribers. Whenever users could benefit from the value your subscriptions provide, we want to help you reach them with an offer they find worthwhile and convenient.

Offers provide a wide range of pricing and eligibility options. While the base plan contains the price available to all users, offers provide alternate pricing to eligible users. You can make offers that are available everywhere their base plan is available, or you can create offers for specific regions. For example:

  • Acquisition offers allow users to try your subscription for free or at a discounted price
  • Upgrade and crossgrade offers incentivize users to benefit from longer billing periods or higher tiers of service
  • Upgrade offers can also help you move subscribers from a prepaid plan to an auto-renewing plan

If you want even more flexibility, you can create custom offers for which you decide the business logic, such as second-chance free trials, or win-back offers for lapsed subscribers.

Better metrics to understand your business

We’ve improved reporting by updating how metrics are calculated in Play Console. Metrics such as new subscription counts, conversion and retention rates, and cancellations are more consistent and calculated in line with financial metrics. You can now directly compare data between Play Console and the Real Time Developer Notifications API. Additionally, subscription metrics are now cumulative. This means that data reported for previous days won’t change over time.

Get started

Starting today, all these new subscription capabilities are available. To learn more please visit the Help Center. When you’re ready to integrate, check out this guide, documentation, and sample app.

Please let us know how we’re doing and contact us with any issues you may encounter.

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Introducing the Google Meet Live Sharing SDK

Posted by Mai Lowe, Product Manager & Ken Cenerelli, Technical Writer


The Google Meet Live Sharing SDK is in preview. To use the SDK, developers can apply for access through our Early Access Program.

Today at Google I/O 2022, we announced new functionality for app developers to leverage the Google Meet video conferencing product through our new Meet Live Sharing SDK. Users can now come together and share experiences with each other inside an app, such as streaming a TV show, queuing up videos to watch on YouTube, collaborating on a music playlist, joining in a dance party, or working out together though Google Meet. This SDK joins the large set of offerings available to developers under the Google Workspace Platform.

Partners like YouTube, Heads Up!, UNO!™ Mobile, and Kahoot! are already integrating our SDK into their applications so that their users can participate in these new, shared interactive experiences later this year.

Supports multiple use cases


The Live Sharing SDK allows developers to sync content across devices in real time and incorporate Meet into their apps, enabling them to bring new, fun, and genuinely connecting experiences to their users. It’s also a great way to reach new audiences as current users can introduce your app to friends and family.

The SDK supports two key use cases:
  • Co-Watching—Syncs streaming app content across devices in real time, and allows users to take turns sharing videos and playing the latest hits from their favorite artist. This allows for users to share controls such as starting and pausing a video, or selecting new content in the app.
  • Co-Doing—Syncs arbitrary app content, allowing users to get together to perform an activity like playing video games or follow the same workout regime.


The co-watching and co-doing APIs are independent but can be used in parallel with each other.


Example workflow illustration of a user starting live sharing within an app using the Live Sharing SDK.


Get started


To learn more, watch our I/O 2022 session on the Google Meet Live Sharing SDK and check out the documentation for the Android version.

If you want to try out the SDK, developers can apply for access through our Early Access Program.


What’s next?


We’re also continuing to improve features by working to build the video-content experience you want to bring to your users. For more announcements like this and for info about the Google Workspace Platform and APIs, subscribe to our developer newsletter.