Author Archives:

The Journey Begins: Meet the 2026 GSoC Contributors!

by Stephanie Taylor, Mary Radomile & Lucila Ortíz, Google Summer of Code

A warm welcome to the 1,141 Contributors of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2026! We are excited to start this new edition alongside our 184 mentoring orgs. Organizations reviewed a record-breaking 23,371 proposals to find the best matches for their communities.

2026 Application Statistics:

  • 15,245 applicants from 131 countries submitting a total of 23,371 proposals
  • Over 2,000 mentors and org admins

What's Next?

Before the first line of code is written, there is Community Bonding. This 3.5-week GSoC tradition is about more than just tool configuration; it's about immersion. It's a dedicated space for Contributors to master the codebase, align with community standards, and understand the 'why' behind their projects. By the time the coding period begins, every Contributor is ready to turn project fundamentals into real-world impact.

The official coding period begins on May 25. For our contributors, this period represents a deep dive into collaborative development, offering the chance to learn new tools and contribute to the heartbeat of open source projects.

Thank you, Mentors!

Finally, we want to express our deepest gratitude to our phenomenal Mentors and Org Admins. As AI profoundly shifts the landscape of open source communities, GSoC is no exception. Your patience, grit, and tireless volunteer efforts are the heartbeat of this program, ensuring its continued success as we welcome a new generation of contributors into the open source ecosystem.

New ways to customize AI-generated meeting notes

We are giving users more control over "Take notes for me" in Google Meet with new customization options and an improved Decisions section.

“Take notes for me” recently introduced customizations for meeting artifacts, such as the option to set your preferred level of detail for your notes. Now, users can tailor their notes to be more actionable and easier to digest by choosing exactly which sections they want to include.

An image showing where to toggle the sections for the “Take notes for me” feature in Google Meet.
Toggle which sections are enabled in-call.
Updates include:

  • Customizable notes sections: Users can now toggle specific sections on or off via the in-call menu, including Summary, Decisions, Next steps, and Details. These changes only affect your current meeting and will not impact your default view for future calls.
  • New “Decisions” section: This section explicitly captures outcomes and tracks their status, such as Aligned, Needs further discussion, Disagreed, or Shelved. Note that the Decisions section will initially be available in English only.
  • Improved summary: The summary section has been improved to be more concise and scannable, allowing you to quickly catch up on key points.
An animation showing the sections within the “Take notes for me” notes in Google Meet.
View Decisions and the New Summary in your Meeting Notes

These improvements will help make your meeting notes more actionable and scannable, and reduce the need to manually reformat notes after a call.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no specific admin control for this feature. It will be available to all users who have access to "Take notes for me."
  • End users: To use this feature, turn on “Take notes for me" in any of your meetings. Within the menu, try customizing which sections are included in your notes. In particular, explore the new summary and decisions sections. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Other Editions: Frontline Plus
  • Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra

Resources

Chrome Dev for Desktop Update

The Dev channel has been updated to 149.0.7815.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Chrome Release Team
Google Chrome

Product reporting changes for Google Ads starting June 15, 2026

Starting June 15, 2026, the Google Ads API will begin transitioning product reporting to include data from all Performance Max networks. This update also provides comprehensive performance metrics across all campaign types and channels, including Performance Max, Shopping, Video, App, and Demand Gen.

What is changing?

Previously, reporting for products in Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns was limited to high-level metrics like impressions and clicks. Also for Performance Max campaigns, only some networks were reported. This update introduces:

  • Expanded metrics for shopping_product: Cost and Conversion metrics will start returning data for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns, not just Shopping and Performance Max.
  • Consistent campaign reporting with shopping_performance_view: All campaign types that use Google Merchant Center (GMC) will have results returned with shopping_performance_view.
  • Network transparency for Performance Max: All networks will start being returned for Performance Max campaigns when querying for shopping_performance_view, so you may notice a one-time increase in all product reporting metrics for these campaigns. Note that data for these new metrics and expanded campaign coverage will only be available starting from June 15 2026. Historical API requests for dates prior to the launch will not contain this expanded data.

If you have any questions or want to discuss this post, please reach out to us on our “Google Advertising and Measurement Community” Discord server.

 - Dora Sun - Google Ads API Team