Category Archives: Google India Blog

The Official Google Blog for India

Update on Project Strobe: New policies for Chrome and Drive

Third-party apps and websites create services that millions of people use to get things done and customize their online experience. To make this ecosystem successful, people need to be confident their data is secure, and developers need clear rules of the road. That’s why last year we announced Project Strobe, a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to your Google account and Android device data.


As a result of our review, we implemented new policies across Gmail and Android to better protect your data. For example, with changes to SMS and Call Log permissions for Android apps, the number of apps with access to this sensitive information has decreased by more than 98 percent. These apps are still able to deliver core services to people just by switching to permissions that access less sensitive data, or by eliminating minor functionality in their apps.


Today, we’re announcing additional changes as a result of Project Strobe, including new policies for Chrome extensions and the Drive API. Here’s what’s new:


Trustworthy Chrome Extensions
There are more than 180,000 extensions in the Chrome Web Store, and nearly half of all Chrome desktop users actively use extensions to customize Chrome and their experience on the web—helping them keep track of to-dos or find shopping deals online. This ability to improve and personalize online experiences depends on a vibrant community of Chrome browser developers.


Last October, we shared our intention to ensure that all Chrome extensions are trustworthy by default. Today, as part of Project Strobe, we’re continuing that effort with additional Chrome Web Store policies. Specifically:

  1. We’re requiring extensions to only request access to the appropriate data needed to implement their features. If there is more than one permission that could be used to implement a feature, developers must use the permission with access to the least amount of data. While this has always been encouraged of developers, now we’re making this a requirement for all extensions.
  2. We’re requiring more extensions to post privacy policies, including extensions that handle personal communications and user-provided content. Our policies have previously required any extension that handles personal and sensitive user data to post a privacy policy and handle that data securely. Now, we’re expanding this category to include extensions that handle user-provided content and personal communications. Of course, extensions must continue to be transparent in how they handle user data, disclosing the collection, use and sharing of that data.


We’re announcing these changes in advance of the official policy rollout this summer to give developers the time needed to ensure their extensions will be in compliance. Developers can learn more about these changes in our FAQ.


Tightening the Drive API
Last fall we updated our user data policy to provide additional guidelines and restrictions for apps seeking to access your Gmail data. Today we’re announcing plans to extend the same policy to Google Drive, which will give you more control over what data third-party apps can access in Drive.


When you connect third-party apps, Drive gives you one central place to keep all your files and helps you easily collaborate with others. With this updated policy, we’ll limit apps that use Google Drive APIs from broadly accessing content or data in Drive. This means we’ll restrict third-party access to specific files and be verifying public apps that require broader access, such as backup services.


These changes will go into effect early next year. Visit the Cloud blog for more details.

Our top priority is to protect user data and keep it safe, while continuing to enable developers to build features that people want and need. As we continue the work of Project Strobe, we’ll also work with our developer partners to give them appropriate time to adjust and update their apps and services

By Ben Smith, Google Fellow and Vice President of Engineering

Announcing Webmaster Conference — India!

In the next three years, half a billion Indian language users will be on the web. This unprecedented growth presents a huge opportunity for local language content creators to expand their reach and to improve the local language web ecosystem.


Last year, we went to 11 cities with our Google Search Conference and engaged with over 700 content creators who joined us from across the length and breadth of the country. Looking at the overwhelmingly positive response from the publishers, we are now excited to bring back this conference, fresh and rebranded to Webmaster Conference.



This year, Webmaster Conference will be held in 15 cities and in five Indian languages -- Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, besides English.


Webmaster Conference series schedule:


City
Date
Primary Language
New Delhi
June 17
Hindi
Chandigarh
June 19
Hindi
Ahmedabad
June 21
Hindi
Patna
June 24
Hindi
Lucknow
June 26
Hindi
Indore
July 15
Hindi
Kolkata
July 17
Bengali
Mumbai
(for women only)
July 19
English
Pune
July 22
Marathi
Coimbatore
July 29
Tamil
Chennai
July 31
Tamil
Bangalore, for women only
August 2
English
Hyderabad
August 5
Telugu
Vijayawada
August 7
Telugu
Visakhapatnam
August 9
Telugu


Agenda and Topics
The conference aims to help you better understand industry best practices for building great websites, creating high-quality content that is safe for users and making content easily accessible and visible on Google Search to the growing number of local language Internet users.


It includes talks on what’s latest on Google Search, the new Google Search Console and various other tools, as well as Google’s underlying principles and policies for Search as well as AdSense. The topics will be selected based on community needs and requests.


We believe it’ll also serve as a great platform for the participants to connect with Googlers from the Search and AdSense teams as well as industry experts and influencers engaged in building the local language web ecosystem.


Who can participate
The conference is open to everyone who creates content on the web. If you create content online, run or own a website, are a publisher or a webmaster, manage SEO or are aspiring to start your online presence in one of the India local languages, then you shouldn't miss this conference!


Register your interest!
If you are interested in participating, please register here!


Registration for each city event closes 10 days before the respective event date.


Once you are shortlisted, you will receive an invitation email from us confirming the venue details. Please note that this is an invite-only event and filling out the form does not guarantee your spot at the conference.


We hope to see you at one of the events! If you have any questions, please go through the FAQs here.

Posted by Syed Malik Mairaj, Trust & Safety Outreach Lead South Asia

Inviting students to participate in Code to Learn contest 2019

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It’s time to let the coder in you come alive as the Code to Learn competition is back for its sixth edition. But, what is Code to Learn? Students from Class 5 to 12 from any school in India can register through their parents or teachers to show their coding genius on Scratch, App Inventor or AI/ML to develop fun Games, animations, story-telling or an Android app; without writing even one line of programming language code!


Artificial Intelligence is helping solve many challenging problems for the society.  Google has put AI to use to solve some of the most pressing problems to society, from helping predict early blindness to giving timely updates on floods in India. We are therefore introducing a special Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Track for Class 9 - 12 students to work on Google Cloud AutoML where they use our existing Machine Learning models to create interesting applications, using a problem statement and data set of their choice. Students define a problem they want to work on, select any open dataset or create their own (Images or Text) and train a pre-trained machine learning model to create their own Machine Learning application. Students will be judged on their ability to identify problems suitable for Machine Learning and how they apply data to find a solution. We are especially excited to see how young minds use this impactful technology to solve problems around them.


Over the years, Computer Science and Programming has evolved and become one of the strongest means of solving real-life problems. Our 2018 winners have created powerful applications including an app to help dispose of electronic waste, a chat app for mental health wellness, and even a learning app that makes language learning fun.


The Code to Learn competition is a platform for students to learn the basics of coding and build a strong foundation in Computer Science. Children are exposed to technology much earlier than ever before, and we believe that these foundational years are the best time to start nurturing their scientific inquisitiveness and curiosity. Through a fun and engaging way, we aim to teach students how to use technology to solve problems around them.


In line with this objective, we have been running the Code to Learn competition for school students in India for the last 6 years. The program has also been adopted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India under the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan.  
The contest registrations are now open and students from across India can submit their projects by August 31, 2019. There are links to online tutorials for Scratch, App Inventor and Google Cloud AutoML on the contest site and are very easy to learn.


We are excited about this year's contest, and are looking forward to seeing the innovation and creativity that students will present to us via their projects.


Code to Learn is co-organized by Google Cloud, ACM India, CS Pathshala, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IIIT Bangalore. ACM is the worldwide society for scientific and educational computing with an aim to advance Computer Science both as a science (through CS Pathshala) and as a profession. IISc and IIIT Bangalore are research-oriented universities based in Bangalore.


By Divy Thakkar, Education Program Manager, Google India

Indian Elections 2019 results: Live on Google Search, Google Assistant and YouTube

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Over the last month and a half, Indian voters have cast their vote to elect the next government. As counting commences today, Google is bringing live updates to Google Search and YouTube.


We are showing live election results, sourced from Election Commission of India through Nielsen, on Search and on the Assistant [across Android, iOS and KaiOS]. You can find national level results (for example by searching for 'India election results') as well as constituency level results (for example by searching for 'East Delhi election results’).

On YouTube, over 150 news channels are bringing live election results coverage through the day. These include NDTV, AajTak, ABP Majha, ABP Ananda, TV9 Telugu Live, Puthiyathalaimurai TV, Public TV, Asianet News, OTV News and News18 Urdu, among others.


For the 2019 Indian Elections, Doordarshan is bringing inclusive live result experience to users on YouTube. Audiences in India can tune into the DD News YouTube Channel for the live video stream in 12 languages [English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Urdu, Assamese and Oriya], as well as sign language. Live audio news will be available on News on AIR YouTube Channel.


If you are in India, you can also catch all the counting day action live on our homepage.



By Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director Public Policy, Google India and South Asia

A look at how news at Google works


During the tragic events of September 11, 2001, people struggled to find timely, trustworthy news and information in Google Search. When they looked for information about what was going on in New York, our algorithms showed results about the city’s history or recommendations for travelers.
Soon after, in 2002, we launched Google News to solve this problem. We built Google News’ homepage to help users discover diverse perspectives from multiple news outlets about the news of the day, prompting them to dive deeper into individual articles and making it easier to compare different views.
Over the past 17 years, we have integrated that thinking into the news products and features we have built for Google Search, YouTube, the Assistant, Discover and more. During this same time, the online news ecosystem has become richer, more diverse and more complex. The modern news industry creates opportunities for everyone to explore more of the world than we ever could before, and to be exposed to perspectives we may not have encountered otherwise. That said, it can also make it difficult to stay informed and to understand which sources to trust.
In response to these changes, we continue to evolve our news experiences in Google products. While we’ve already done a lot to explain How Google Search Works, people often ask us how we go about building news experiences in Google Search, Google News, Discover, YouTube or the Assistant. So today, we are launching a How News Works website to do just that. It outlines the objectives of our work, the principles we follow and the approaches we take in the design of news experiences in Google products.

Supporting the news ecosystem, and its readers

Google aims to help everyone better understand the world by connecting them with high quality news from a variety of perspectives. We do this in real-time for Google News editions around the world. The algorithms used for our news experiences analyze hundreds of different factors to identify and organize the stories journalists are covering, in order to elevate diverse, trustworthy information.
Google does not make editorial decisions about which stories to show, except for the infrequent case of designated topical experiences. In these cases, we may want to make sure that there is a dedicated topic in Google News for a significant event, such as the Oscars or World Cup. We make it clear to users when these topical experiences take place.

News experiences rely on the sustainability of high-quality journalism, so we strive to help journalism flourish by bringing new audiences to publishers. Google’s news products and features send web traffic to news sources all around the world, helping them expand their reach. In addition, we develop tools to help publishers turn their readers into subscribers, and the Google News Initiative offers programs to help address industry-wide challenges and fuel innovation in journalism.

How we build news experiences

Everyone has different expectations and preferences when it comes to exploring news. Over the course of one day, we might want to know the stories that are on top of the day’s agenda, get the latest on topics that we personally care about or get more context about a story we want to explore further. That’s why Google provides three distinct but interconnected ways to discover news across our products and devices:

  • Top News, for everyone, with features like Headlines in Google News or Breaking News on YouTube. They showcase the important stories being covered at a given point in time, and are not personalized.

  • News personalized for you, with products like Discover or features like For You in Google News, or the Latest tab of the YouTube app on TVs, that help you stay informed about subjects that matter to you.

  • Deep context and diverse perspectives, featuring unpersonalized news from a broad range of sources within Top Stories in Search, Top News search results on YouTube or Full Coverage in Google News.

    New features need to pass a rigorous evaluation process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search quality raters around the world. We also seek user feedback before and after product launches to understand how to further improve the services we provide.
    You will find more information about these topics on our How News Works website, including some of the signals our ranking systems look at and more details about the news experiences currently available on Google

    Posted by Richard Gingras, VP News

    Pixel 3a: the helpful (and more affordable) phone by Google

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    These days, you expect a lot from a smartphone. You want a premium camera that can take vivid, share-worthy photos wherever you go. You need a tool that connects you to the world with all your favorite apps, and also helps out during the day. And you want a phone that has a battery that is reliable for long stretches, while it stays secure and up to date with the latest software. You also don’t want it to break the bank. The new Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL are all of those things and more, for half the price of premium flagship phones.


    Pixel 3a is designed to fit nicely in your hand, and includes an OLED display for crisp images and bright colors. In India it comes in two colors—Just Black and Clearly White—and two sizes, priced at ₹39,999 for the 5.6-inch display and ₹44,999 for the 6-inch model.


    High-end features: Camera, Google Assistant, Battery Life, Security
    Google Pixel 3a delivers what you’d expect from a premium device. Starting with the award-winning camera, Pixel 3a lets you take stunning photos using Google’s HDR+ technology with features such as Portrait Mode, Super Res Zoom, and Night Sight to capture clear shots in low light. Google Photos is built in, so you can save all your high-quality photos and videos with free, unlimited storage. It comes with an 18-Watt charger so you get up to 7 hours of battery life on a 15-minute charge, and up to 30 hours on a full charge*.


    Squeeze Pixel 3a for the Google Assistant to send texts, get directions, and set reminders—simply using your voice.


    We’ll make sure your Pixel 3a is protected against new threats by providing three years of security and operating system updates. It also comes with the custom-built Titan M chip to help protect your most sensitive data.


    New features at a more accessible price
    Pixel makes it easy to use Google apps—like YouTube, Google Photos and Gmail. And you'll get access to new features first. Pixel 3a and the entire Pixel portfolio will get a preview of AR in Google Maps (only available in areas covered on Street View,) so the next time you're getting around town you can see walking directions overlaid on the world itself, rather than looking at a blue dot on a map. This helps you know precisely where you are, and exactly which way to start walking.


    Time lapse is coming to Google Pixel 3a, so you can capture an entire sunset in just a few seconds of video—great for posting on social media or messaging to your friends.


    Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL also feature eSIM, enabling conveniences such as setting up your device without needing a SIM card, storing multiple operator profiles on a device simultaneously, and conveniently switching between them. Starting today, eSIM on Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL are now supported on Airtel and Reliance Jio and will also be available on Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.


    Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL will be available on Flipkart -- you can register on the site starting 8th May 2019, and the phones will be available for purchase on 15th May 2019.


    Also when you buy a Pixel 3a you get 3 months of YouTube Music Premium**, on us.

    If you’re new to Pixel, you can transfer photos, music, and media quickly with the included Quick Switch Adapter. If you need a little extra help, 24/7 support from Google is just a tap away in the tips and support link in the settings menu. You can even share your screen for guided assistance.


    Posted by Mario Queiroz, GM & VP, Pixel


    *Approximate battery life based on a mix of talk, data, standby, mobile hotspot and use of other features, with always on display off. An active display or data usage will decrease battery life. Charging rates are based upon use of the included charger. Charging time performance statistics are approximate. Actual results may vary.

    **This YouTube Music Premium 3-month free trial offer is only open to Indian residents who activate a Pixel 3a before September 30, 2019. Offer only available to customers who are not current YouTube Premium, YouTube Music Premium or Google Play Music subscribers, have not been YouTube Premium, YouTube Music Premium, YouTube Red or Google Play Music subscribers nor participated in a YouTube Red or Google Play Music trial before. Offer must be redeemed by October 31, 2019. Valid form of payment required at sign-up, but you will not be charged until the free trial period expires. At the end of the trial period, a user will be automatically charged the standard subscription price, currently ₹99 per month. You can cancel your free trial at no charge at any time before the trial is over. Offer requires a Google account. Full terms here. Promoter: Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

    Google AI Impact Challenge Grantee announcement

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    As part of Google’s AI for Social Good program, we launched the Google AI Impact Challenge, based on our strong belief that emerging technologies will help us address big social, humanitarian and environmental problems. We were blown away by the number of thoughtful proposals we received: 2,602 applications from 119 countries, nearly two thirds of the world’s countries.


    Forty percent of the applications came from organizations with no previous experience with artificial intelligence, which is still a developing concept in the social impact field. Our job, as we thoroughly vetted the applications, was to choose the best projects based on feasibility, potential for impact, scalability and the responsible use of AI.  


    Today, at I/O, we are announcing 20 organizations -- including one from India -- that will share $25 million in grants from Google.org, credit and consulting from Google Cloud, mentoring from Google AI experts and the opportunity to join a customized accelerator program from Google Developers Launchpad. The selected projects address issues in the areas of health, economic opportunity and empowerment, environmental protection and conservation, education, misinformation and crisis and emergency response. Here’s the full list of grantees.
    • Wadhwani AI (India): Using image recognition to track and analyze pest control efforts, enabling timely and localized intervention to stabilize crop production and reduce pesticide usage.
    • American University of Beirut (Lebanon): Applying machine learning to weather and agricultural data to improve irrigation for resource-strapped farmers in Africa and the Middle East.
    • Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (Colombia): Using satellite imagery to detect illegal mines, enabling communities and the government to protect people and natural resources.
    • Crisis Text Line, Inc. (USA): Using natural language processing to optimize assignment of texters in crisis to counselors, reducing wait times and maintaining effective communication.
    • Eastern Health (Australia): Analyzing clinical records from ambulances to uncover trends and potential points of intervention to inform policy and public health responses around suicide.
    • Fondation MSF (France): Detecting patterns in antimicrobial imagery to help medical staff in low-resource areas prescribe the right antibiotics for bacterial infections.
    • Full Fact (UK): Developing trend monitoring and clustering tools to aid fact checkers’ analysis, so they can help contextualize the news and enable informed decisions.
    • Gringgo Indonesia Foundation (Indonesia): Building an image recognition tool to improve plastic recycling rates, reduce ocean plastic pollution and strengthen waste management in under-resourced communities.
    • Hand Talk (Brazil) Using AI to translate Portuguese into Brazilian Sign Language through a digital avatar, enabling digital communication for Brazilians who are deaf and and hard-of-hearing.
    • HURIDOCS (Switzerland): Using natural language processing and ML to extract and connect relevant information in case-related documents, allowing human rights lawyers to effectively research and defend their cases.
    • Makerere University (Uganda): Tracking and predicting air pollution patterns via low-cost sensors in Kampala, Uganda, improving air quality forecasting and intervention.
    • New York University (USA): Partnering with the New York City Fire Department’s analytics team to optimize response to its yearly 1.7 million emergencies, accounting for factors like weather, traffic and location.
    • Nexleaf Analytics (USA): Building data models to predict vaccine viability throughout the cold vaccine supply chain and ensure effective delivery.
    • The Pennsylvania State University (USA): Using deep learning tools to better predict locations and times at risk for landslides, creating a warning system to minimize the impact of natural disasters.  
    • Quill.org (USA): Using deep learning to provide low-income students with immediate feedback on their writing, enabling students to revise their work and quickly improve their skills.
    • Rainforest Connection (USA): Using deep learning for bioacoustic monitoring and commonplace mobile technology to track rainforest health and detect threats.
    • Skilllab BV (Netherlands): Helping refugees translate their skills to the European labor market and recommend relevant career pathways to explore.
    • TalkingPoints (USA): Using AI to enable two-way translated parent/teacher engagement and coaching when language represents a barrier to communication.
    • The Trevor Project (USA): Using natural language processing and sentiment analysis to determine a LGBTQ youth’s suicide risk level to better tailor services for individuals seeking help.
    • WattTime Corporation (USA): Using image processing algorithms and satellite networks to replace on-site power plant emissions monitors with open-source monitoring platforms.


    Next week, the grantees will converge in San Francisco for the kickoff of the Google AI Impact Challenge Accelerator, the six-month program run by Google Developers Launchpad. We look forward to working with these organizations, and to seeing the impact of their projects on such a wide variety of issues around the world.


    Posted by Jeff Dean, Google Senior Fellow and SVP, Google AI and Jacquelline Fuller, President, Google.org

    Privacy that works for everyone

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    Whether it’s delivering search results in the correct language or recommending the quickest route home, data can make Google products more helpful to you. And you should be able to understand and manage your data—and make privacy choices that are right for you. That’s why easy-to-use privacy features and controls have always been built into our products. At I/O, we announced a number of additional privacy and security tools across our products and platforms:


    Making it easier to control your data
    One-tap access to your Google Account from all our major products
    Privacy controls should be easy to find and use. A few years ago, we introduced Google Account to provide a comprehensive view of the information you’ve shared and saved with Google, and one place to access your privacy and security settings. Simple on/off controls let you decide which activity you want to save to your account to make Google products more helpful. You can also choose which activities or categories of information you want to delete.


    As the number of Google products has grown, we’re making it even easier to find these controls. Today you’ll see your Google Account profile picture appear in the top right corner across products like Gmail, Drive, Contacts and Pay. To quickly access your privacy controls, just tap on your picture and follow the link to your Google Account. The prominent placement of your profile picture also makes it easier to know when you’re signed into your Google Account. We’re bringing this one-tap access to more products this month, including Search, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, the Assistant and News.
    Easily manage your data in Search, Maps and the Assistant
    Last year, we made it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within Search. Without leaving Search, you can review and delete your recent Search activity, get quick access to the most relevant privacy controls in your Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with your data. Now we’re making it easier to manage your data in Maps, the Assistant and YouTube (coming soon). For example, you'll be able to review and delete your location activity data directly in Google Maps, and then quickly get back to your directions.


    Auto-delete now available for Web & App Activity, coming soon to Location History
    Last week we announced a new control that lets you choose a time limit for the amount of time your Location History and Web & App Activity data will be saved—3 or 18 months. Any data older than that will be automatically and continuously deleted from your account if you choose. This new control is available today for Web & App Activity and coming next month to Location History.


    Bringing Incognito mode to Google apps
    Since launching more than a decade ago, Incognito mode in Chrome has given you the choice to browse the internet without your activity being saved to your browser or device. As our phones become the primary way we access the internet, we thought it was important to build Incognito mode for our most popular apps. It’s available in YouTube and coming soon to Maps and Search. Tap from your profile picture to easily turn it on or off. When you turn on Incognito mode in Maps, your activity—like the places you search or get directions to—won’t be saved to your Google Account.
    Building stronger privacy controls into our platforms
    We also made announcements today about privacy across our platforms and products: Android Q is bringing privacy to the forefront of Settings and creating more transparency and control around location. Chrome announced plans to more aggressively restrict fingerprinting across the web and improve cookie controls. Finally, we announced plans to give users more visibility into the data used to personalize ads and the companies involved in the process for the ads that Google shows on our own properties and those of our publishing partners.


    Doing more for users with less data
    Federated learning makes products more helpful while keeping data on your device
    Advances in machine learning are making our privacy protections stronger. One example is federated learning, a new approach to machine learning. It allows developers to train AI models and make products smarter—for you and everyone else—without your data ever leaving your device. These new AI techniques allow us to do more with less data.


    Gboard, Google’s keyboard, now uses federated learning to improve predictive typing as well as emoji prediction across tens of millions of devices. Previously, Gboard would learn to suggest new words for you, like “zoodles” or “Targaryen”, only if you typed them several times. Now, with federated learning, Gboard can also learn new words after thousands of people start using them, without Google ever seeing what you’re typing.


    We’ve also invested in differential privacy protections, which enable us to train machine learning models without memorizing information that could reveal specific details about a user. We published early research on this topic in 2014, and since then we’ve used it in Chrome, in Gmail with Smart Compose, and in Google Maps to show you how busy a restaurant is. And with the release of the TensorFlow Privacy open-source project, ML developers can now more easily use differential privacy technology.


    The strongest security across our products and platforms
    Your data is not private if it’s not secure. We’ve always invested in systems to keep our users safe—from our Safe Browsing protection that protects nearly 4 billion devices every day to blocking more than 100 million spam and phishing attempts in Gmail every day. Security keys provide the strongest form of 2-Step Verification phishing protection and now they’ll be built into all phones running on Android 7.0 and above, making it available to over one billion compatible devices.


    And beginning this summer, anyone with a Nest Account will have the option to migrate their Nest Account to a Google Account, which comes with the added benefits of tools and automatic security protections, like 2-Step Verification, notifications that proactively alert you about unusual account activity and access to Security Checkup.


    We strongly believe that privacy and security are for everyone. We’ll continue to ensure our products are safe, invest in technologies that allow us to do more for users with less data, and empower everyone with clear, meaningful choices around their data.


    Posted by Eric Miraglia, Director of Product Management, Privacy and Data Protection Office

    Introducing auto-delete controls for your Location History and activity data

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    Whether you’re looking for the latest news or the quickest driving route, we aim to make our products helpful for everyone. And when you turn on settings like Location History or Web & App Activity, the data can make Google products more useful for you—like recommending a restaurant that you might enjoy, or helping you pick up where you left off on a previous search. We work to keep your data private and secure, and we’ve heard your feedback that we need to provide simpler ways for you to manage or delete it.


    You can already use your Google Account to access simple on/off controls for Location History and Web & App Activity, and if you choose—to delete all or part of that data manually. In addition to these options, we’re announcing auto-delete controls that make it even easier to manage your data. Here’s how they’ll work:
    Choose a time limit for how long you want to keep your activity data—3 or 18 months—and any data older than that will be automatically deleted from your account on an ongoing basis. These controls are coming first to Location History and Web & App Activity and will roll out in the coming weeks.


    You should always be able to manage your data in a way that works best for you--and we’re committed to giving you the best controls to make that happen.

    By Marlo McGriff and David Monsees, Product Managers, Google

    Announcing the GNI Newsroom Leadership Program with Columbia Journalism School

    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/J8jWI8iVremDEGx8R4pKAnO4vsyEXUZ9vQawv_Mvi1HjFZCXXGQqmpxyZt6ralgSQ8JjQlHebsJp4qvWcE8Q82mJJ5MZ4QYS90p54pk16Dj8War5XboROv2p9YQWIy2A2kscdSRE
    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/J8jWI8iVremDEGx8R4pKAnO4vsyEXUZ9vQawv_Mvi1HjFZCXXGQqmpxyZt6ralgSQ8JjQlHebsJp4qvWcE8Q82mJJ5MZ4QYS90p54pk16Dj8War5XboROv2p9YQWIy2A2kscdSRE
    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/J8jWI8iVremDEGx8R4pKAnO4vsyEXUZ9vQawv_Mvi1HjFZCXXGQqmpxyZt6ralgSQ8JjQlHebsJp4qvWcE8Q82mJJ5MZ4QYS90p54pk16Dj8War5XboROv2p9YQWIy2A2kscdSRE




    As part of our efforts to support the news industry, the Google News Initiative is funding a newsroom leadership program at Columbia Journalism School for journalists in Asia Pacific




    Not so long ago, journalists had the luxury of focusing on filling the next day’s paper, radio segment or television broadcast, without needing to think about business models, subscriptions, publishing tools and technology. Today’s newsroom leaders need to understand the business of news in order to be stewards of great journalism. Everyone must also think like a publisher.
    To help journalists in the Asia Pacific better manage the transition to the digital age, the Google News Initiative has teamed up with the Columbia School of Journalism to offer a curated program to meet their needs.


    The program, which includes four weeks of onsite courses at Columbia University in New York City and Google offices in Silicon Valley and Asia, is for mid-career journalists who have the potential to take on larger roles and run their organizations. Each Fellow will also work on a specific project during the year that is relevant to their newsroom within the main fellowship topics: technology, monetization, and data.


    Ten fellows from the Asia-Pacific region will learn how to lead through change in this fast-moving environment and identify opportunities for entrepreneurship within their newsrooms. The program will emphasize:
    • How news companies operate as businesses, and how technology has revolutionized what it means to be a publisher.
    • Ways to evaluate the costs and benefits of introducing technology-driven changes into  newsroom workflows, and how to ensure managers and direct reports support new ways of working.
    • The use of data to create compelling content that will resonate with audiences
    • How to facilitate design-thinking in newsrooms using Google's design sprint methodology, which is used to solve problems and develop products


    The deadline to apply is June 26, 2019, but journalists are encouraged to submit applications early, as they are considered on a rolling basis. The Google News Initiative is partnering with news industry and journalist organizations around the Asia-Pacific region to shortlist applicants, including the Walkley Foundation, J-Forum, Journalists Association of Korea, Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, and Splice. Shortlisted applicants are interviewed by the Google News Initiative, and a Columbia University faculty member will select the Fellows from among those who meet all the criteria and are presented by GNI and its vetting partner institutions.   


    For more information about the program, curriculum and application instructions, visit the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism website. Submit your application here.

    Posted by Irene Jay Liu,  News Lab Lead, APAC