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What happened at Google Cloud Next ‘18: Day 1

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hIIFOkEu1nkEZMBtIggcJL1qTqdlK2QzHKLHrDTnXhGz-cOy5EhE0GnAwW8tg_E0G1TR4BhJweztVDFsslUNWRzq2n01aFGFe8PL_767j-fJFK0LmGzh-AfwXK4wWRGl3mRZZYSG Google Cloud Team Google Google
What a way to kick off Next ‘18. We started by welcoming our community of leaders, developers, and entrepreneurs to Moscone Center in San Francisco. As Diane mentioned in her keynote, it was Google’s biggest event ever, with more than 25,000 registrants. We learned how the cloud is reimagining work, rethinking the contact center, and redefining what’s possible for many of our customers. (Plus, there was a surprise visit from Sundar.) Read on for the highlights.




Better building in the cloud
Cloud computing is so much more than outsourced infrastructure—it promises agility, reliability and scale. We want to deliver on that promise, so today, we announced Cloud Services Platform, a set of foundational services and technologies that deliver advanced operational and management capabilities to your IT environment, in the cloud and on-premise. Read more in our Cloud Services Platform and serverless announcements.

What we announced

  • We’re introducing a service mesh based on the open-source Istio, which will soon move to version 1.0, and Managed Istio, a fully managed version thereof, running in GCP. Also, Apigee API Management for Istio lets enterprises operationalize microservices created by the Istio service mesh with their existing API management tools.
  • For Istio and App Engine workloads, the new Stackdriver Service Monitoring provides an SRE-inspired, service-oriented view of your workloads, showing you how your end users experience your systems.
  • We’re furthering hybrid computing with GKE On-Prem, a Google-configured version of Kubernetes that includes multi-cluster management, that you can deploy on-premise or in other clouds.
  • GKE Policy Management establishes a single source of truth for the policies that govern your Kubernetes workloads, across any enrolled cluster.
  • We want you to build all your applications serverlessly, even if you use Kubernetes. To help you do that, we will offer the new GKE serverless add-on. Then, we’re releasing that same serverless framework as open-source under the name Knative.
  • Speaking of serverless, we’re adding support for Python 3.7 and PHP 7.2 runtimes on App Engine standard environment.
  • Cloud Functions is now generally available, with support for additional languages, plus performance, networking and security features.
  • Serverless containers on Cloud Functions allow you to run container-based workloads in a fully managed environment and still only pay for what you use.
  • Cloud Firestore lets you store and sync your app data at global scale, with access within the GCP Console coming soon.
  • Finally, Cloud Build is our new continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) service that’s integrated with popular developer tools and that lets you build serverless applications.


AI for every business
Empowering businesses and developers to do more with AI means providing them with tools that make it possible to take advantage of machine learning, regardless of skill level or expertise. Read more in our AI and Contact Center blog posts.

What we announced

  • Cloud AutoML Vision, Natural Language, and Translation extend powerful ML models to suit specific needs, without requiring any specialized knowledge in machine learning or coding.
  • TPU V3s, our custom ASIC chips designed for machine learning workloads, are in alpha.
  • New enhancements to Dialogflow Enterprise Edition enable you to design smarter and more conversational interfaces.
  • A new solution, Contact Center AI, which includes new Dialogflow features alongside other tools to assist live agents and perform analytics.
Reimagining how we work
In order to stay competitive, companies are reimagining how their global teams work together using cloud-native collaboration in G Suite that’s smart, simple and secure. Proactively protect against security threats, manage where company data is stored and shared and communicate more effectively with these new, assistive capabilities in G Suite. Read more in this post from G Suite.


What we announced

  • A new investigation tool in the Security Center helps admins identify which users are potentially infected, see if anything’s been shared externally and remove access to Drive files or delete malicious emails.
  • Customers can choose where to store primary data for select G Suite apps—globally, distributed, U.S. or Europe—with Data Regions for G Suite.
  • Smart Reply is coming to HangoutsChat. Using AI, Smart Reply recognizes which messages need responses and proposes reply options that are casual enough for chat, yet appropriate for the workplace.
  • Smart Compose in Gmail intelligently autocompletes emails for you—by filling in greetings, common phrases and more–so you collaborate more efficiently. Smart Compose will be available to G Suite customers in the coming weeks.
  • Grammar Suggestions in Google Docs uses a unique machine translation-based approach to recognize grammatical errors (simple and complex) and suggest corrections. It is available in an Early Adopter Program (“beta”) for G Suite customers today.
  • Voice Commands for Hangouts Meet hardware brings some of the same magic of the Google Assistant to the conference room so that teams can connect to video meetings quickly. Voice Commands will roll out to select Meet hardware customers later this year.
What our customers are saying
At Next ‘18 we’re joined by more than 290 customer speakers. Here are a few of our favorite quotes from day one:


“My guys love working with your team. We’ve learned a lot from Google about site reliability engineering. But more than that, I think it’s the commitment to open source—that made all the difference. At the end of the day, it wasn’t me who chose Google, it was my engineers. Google was important to the engineering team, so it mattered to me.” — Mike McNamara, Executive VP, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Target


“[Visiting your midwest data center] made us realize Google was operating at a totally different scale. I also came to appreciate how much security was involved at every single point. Security to get into the complex. Security for each server. And security for destroying drives that were no longer being used.” —Bernd Leukert, Member of the Executive Board, Products & Innovation, SAP SE


"We have 95 years of innovation. As the world and consumers change, we have to change too. My job is to make sure over 40,000 associates in over 100 countries have the most robust tools to innovate and service our clients… [we needed] a collaboration platform that allows our employees to connect anytime, anywhere on any device. That led us to G Suite." — Kim Anstett, Chief Information Officer, Nielsen


“Standardizing monitoring signals lets us monitor across our systems, correlate logs, and do distributed tracing. But these monitoring concepts requires services to communicate in a standard way. With Istio…We have a uniform and transparent mechanism to collect metrics and logs…and are running it in production.” — Jeff White, Software Engineer, eBay


We’ll be updating this post all week as it happens at Next ‘18. Check back here tomorrow for the latest news from the event.


Posted by Google Cloud Next team

Mid-year Update on Our Five Creator Priorities for 2018

https://img.youtube.com/vi/J3-ZtSpptGs/maxresdefault.jpg Susan Wojcicki CEO YouTube
Dear YouTube Creators,


It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through 2018. With 1.9 billion logged-in users coming to YouTube each month, our community continues to grow. More and more creators are building their businesses and discovering that they can shape the global conversation with just a phone and an internet connection. While mobile is one of the most popular ways fans enjoy content, more and more people are using their living room screens to watch their favorite creators. On average, users now watch over 180 million hours of YouTube on TV screens every day.  


While the future is full of opportunity, it is not without challenges. One of the ways we make YouTube better is through testing and iterations, but we understand that sudden changes related to experiments are difficult to manage. So, in order to minimize the disruption for you, we will make our best effort to communicate with you as these tests approach and we’ll use your feedback to make the features better in the long run.


And now, here is an update on my five key priorities for 2018:


1. Transparency and Communication
We continue to prioritize communicating more with creators. We made a conscious effort to respond on social media, and we answered 600% more tweets through our official handles (@TeamYouTube, @YTCreators and @YouTube) in 2018 than in 2017 and grew our reach by 30% in the past few months. We’ve also built a new feature than enables us to deliver relevant information in YouTube Studio, formerly Creator Studio.  In February, we began testing a new dashboard with a small group of creators, and we recently rolled out it out to all creators on the platform. The dashboard, which launched for all English channels and will soon be available in an additional 76 languages in the next two weeks, now gives you platform updates and news along with performance about your latest videos in one easy-to-find place.


Last year, I started my own channel with the goal of communicating more with creators and saw first-hand some of the challenges and opportunities of sharing my voice through video. Today, I’m posting a new video, along with this blog, updating you on the five key annual priorities. Additionally, Creator Insider, an unofficial channel started by YouTube employees, continues to offer weekly updates, responds to concerns, such as notifications, and provides a more behind-the-scenes look at some of our product launches. And most recently, we combined our Creator Academy and YouTube Creators channels, so that you can find both inspiration and education in one place: YouTube Creators.




2. Supporting your success
This year at VidCon we shared some exciting new products designed to grow and strengthen our communities and give you more ways to earn revenue in addition to ads, including:

Channel Memberships - Viewers pay a monthly recurring fee of $4.99 to get unique badges, new emojis, Members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to unique custom perks offered by creators, such as exclusive livestreams, extra videos, or shout-outs. We worked with a small group of creators to develop this service and are expanding it to eligible channels with more than 100,000 subscribers and even more creators in the coming months.

Merch - We’ve joined forces with Teespring so creators can choose from over 20 merchandise items to customize and sell via a shelf on their channel. This is available to all eligible U.S.-based channels with over 10,000 subscribers, with expanded merchandising partners and availability for creators coming soon.

Famebit - Acquired by Google in 2016, FameBit has been helping brands tap into YouTube's audience by using creator's authentic voices to develop unique branded content at scale. Over half of channels that used Famebit in the first three months of 2018 doubled their YouTube revenue. In the coming months, we’ll be launching a feature that will allow users to easily shop for products, apps or tickets directly from the creator watch page.


In addition to new products, we continue to invest in YouTube Originals as another way to help creators earn more revenue. Well over two-thirds of our Originals star YouTubers both in front of and behind the camera, and since we launched Originals three years ago, we’ve seen their success have a ripple effect on creators. Some creators have seen as much as a 20 percent increase in channel viewership after their Original has launched.


Finally, one of my biggest priorities is to show advertisers the incredible opportunities on YouTube to tap into engaged communities and extend their reach. We’ve been working hard on brand safety and meeting with the biggest brands in the world to share your incredible stories and the progress we’re making together. The results have been positive, and I continue to make this a priority.


3. Giving people more ways to engage
One of the greatest strengths of the platform is enabling two-way conversations between creators and fans and fans to fans. We’ve been working hard to build out the different ways to enable interactions on YouTube and seeing results. Our overall interactions, such as likes, comments and chats, grew by more than 60% year over year.


Our Community Tab continues to be a one-stop shop for growing and engaging with fans. Visible across the platform, these posts let you move beyond just video to build even deeper connections with fans through GIFs, pics, polls, and text. Every day, over sixty million users click into or engage with Community posts.


Livestreaming continues to be an area of growth for creators, with watchtime of livestreams increasing by 10X over the last three years. At VidCon, we launched Premieres to help creators take advantage of the popularity of live tools, such as Super Chat and scheduling, by allowing them to debut pre-recorded videos as a live moment on YouTube.


We’re also seeing more creators use Stories, a simple way of posting videos without editing or post-production, to engage with their fans as well. We have some key improvements coming soon and later this year, we will expand stories to all eligible creators with more than ten thousand subscribers.


4. Tightening and enforcing our policies
Earlier this year, we released the first YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Report and we’ll be updating this regularly with new data. We just released the newest update in late June, which you can read here.


We also announced our new Copyright Match tool, which uses the matching power of Content ID to help creators find copies of your content when it’s been uploaded by other channels. This will be offered to all creators, including those who are not part of a multi-channel network (MCN). We’ve been testing this tool with a thousand creators over the last year to tailor it to your specific needs and is a great complement to the range of copyright tools we provide.


5. Learning and education
Education is one of the greatest benefits of YouTube. Everyday, people watch learning-related content over a billion times and they’re using it to develop new skills and encourage their passions. I’m proud to announce a new initiative, YouTube Learning, through which we’re providing grants and promotion to support education focused creator content, expert organizations and learners. We're also expanding our learning content team efforts and have a newly dedicated product and engineering team working on building out features for learning on YouTube. Our hope is to support those who use YouTube to share their knowledge with the world and the millions of users who come to our platform to learn.


Looking forward
As our devices have become an increasingly important part of our lives, we want to support digital wellbeing. When we rolled out the YouTube Kids app, we included a timer that parents could use to limit the time their children spent in the app. We have since realized that a timer could also be helpful for adults. So, within the broader YouTube app, we’ve launched a feature that sends users a reminder to take a break. We’ve also added an option for users to get a single digest notification once per day from YouTube rather than at the moment notifications, and we enabled users to configure their notifications so that they happen within specific timeframes.


As we head into the second half of the year, I look forward to continuing to work with you to create communities and engage with people using video. You are building the next generation of media companies, and I’m humbled by the amazing work you do every day.


Susan Wojcicki
CEO of YouTube

Introducing Launchpad Accelerator India, a dedicated program for ML/AI startups focused on Solving for India’s needs

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CCD-dES_RAx-WpU2ZrpOgCaoMBORuy32U_WJqcg2z-Ib4av3u4U0unrem_VvZbYZOZoSR_Kgc5vr7bQnSgGnHKqIVhL7IRpIYkUY18JUQfCrpP5p4e9-vI_V-ou1X-YuB6xieOWT Paul Ravindranath Regional Lead Launchpad Accelerator Google India
Applications are open starting today


Over the last 3.5 years, Google’s Launchpad has successfully supported hundreds of startups from India. From short format startup mentorship activities like Launchpad Start and Build to the 6-month global Launchpad Accelerator, Indian startups have experienced the best of Google’s mentor network, resources, methodologies and technology. Thirty Indian startups have benefitted from our global Launchpad Accelerator program, helping them collectively raise over $70M and drive revenue increases of almost 500%.


Based on the growing maturity of the Indian startup ecosystem, last year we launched an India-only pilot “Solve for India”, to identify startups that were focused on building solutions that serves India’s needs using latest technologies.  We identified several startups from this roadshow and hosted a “Solve for India” mentorship boot camp,  where the founders and their teams spent four days in one-on-one consults with experts from Google and mentors from the industry to solve critical product and growth challenges.



Building on the efforts of our Launchpad offerings till date and based on our learning from the pilot, today we're excited to announce Google’s Launchpad Accelerator India, our new mentorship program tailored exclusively for startups based in India and  deploying Machine Learning/AI to build solutions for India’s local needs.


Launchpad Accelerator India will kick-off as a three-month accelerator that provides Indian startups with mentorship and access to the best of Google - its people, network and technologies. Applications for the first class is now open until July 31, 12pm IST and the first class will begin in September 2018, where shortlisted startups will get to attend a two week in-person bootcamp.


What do we look for when selecting startups?
Startups will need to meet the following criteria to be considered for the Launchpad Accelerator India:


All startups in the program should:
1/ Be a technology startup.
2/ Be based in India.  
3/ Have preferably at least raised seed funding.
4/ Address a challenge that is specific to India
5/ Use advanced technology like AI/ML to power the solution.


Each class will consist of upto 10 startups who will receive mentorship and support from the best of Google in AI/ML, Cloud, UX, Android, Web, Product Strategy and Marketing. Startups will also receive Google Cloud Credits from  $20K - going up to $100K each.


We look forward to welcome the first cohort of innovators for Launchpad Accelerator India and will continue to support them to drive innovation for  India .


Posted by Paul Ravindranath, Regional Lead, Launchpad Accelerator, Google India

Building a better news experience on YouTube, together

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/RWyeBCqQQlZ8_kh5kzAMPZYxA1AgIbCXZCq1rIBOssaRYqYsUK3tmqLwuSTA7_YsuWIEKwCT5nUJF7PtwxnVqpIybsX2iWoWuM1aTVClqK99fMLtN2cJEfemfhh2rd8oW7w8pHJa Neal Mohan and Robert Kyncl Chief Product Officer and Chief Business Officer YouTube


The work of trusted journalistic organizations is as critical as ever, especially when it comes to seeking information about current events online.


In March, the Google News Initiative (GNI) kicked off with the goal of helping journalism thrive in the digital age. Today, we’re announcing steps we’re taking with the GNI to support the future of news in online video, and product features we’ve been working on to improve the news experience on YouTube.  


Supporting journalism with technology that allows news to thrive
We believe quality journalism requires sustainable revenue streams and that we have a responsibility to support innovation in products and funding for news.


For example, in 2015 European publishers came to us to ask about how they could scale their video efforts, especially because maintaining video delivery infrastructure is costly. Working alongside them we launched Player for Publishers, a solution that enables news organizations to use YouTube’s video player to give viewers a world-class video experience across their own websites and mobile apps. Player for Publishers reduces costs and offers improved monetization for news organizations.


Since then, we've expanded these efforts beyond Europe.

Today, over 100 publishers in more than 25 countries use Player for Publishers.


As part of the launch of GNI in March, we announced funding to support the future of news. Today we are committing $25M to a YouTube-specific investment:

1/ Expertise.  We’re establishing a working group with news organizations and experts from around the world to help us develop new product features, improve the news experience on YouTube, and tackle emerging challenges. News organizations including Vox Media, Jovem Pan, and India Today are early members of the working group. We’re looking forward to having more join as we convene the group in the coming weeks.   

2/ Innovation Funding. We will provide funding across approximately 20 global markets to support news organizations in building sustainable video operations. Provided on an application basis to news organizations of all types, these grants will enable our partners to build key capabilities, train staff on video best practices, enhance production facilities and develop formats optimized for online video.

3/ Support. We’re significantly expanding our team focused on supporting news publishers. These specialists will be based around the world and support partners with training and best practices in formats, audience development, day-to-day platform operations, and sophisticated technical integrations.


News organizations interested in more information about these efforts can sign up here.


Making authoritative sources readily accessible
Authoritativeness is essential to viewers, especially during fast-moving, breaking news events, so we’ve been investing in new product features to prominently surface authoritative sources:


Providing more sources and context on breaking news
After a breaking news event, it takes time to verify, produce and publish high-quality videos. Journalists often write articles first to break the news rather than produce videos. That’s why in the coming weeks in the U.S. we will start providing a short preview of news articles in search results on YouTube that link to the full article during the initial hours of a major news event, along with a reminder that breaking and developing news can rapidly change.  


Expanding Top News and Breaking News
To make it easier to find quality news, our Top News shelf prominently highlights videos from news sources in search results (see the picture below on the left). And when a breaking news event happens, we want users to know about it. That’s why our Breaking News shelf highlights videos from news organizations about that event directly on the YouTube homepage (see the picture below on the right). Today, our Top News and Breaking News features are launched in 17 countries, including the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Japan, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and more. We will double that number in the coming months.


  


Showcasing more local news, starting with the U.S.  
Many people want, value, and trust local news. And when a major event happens, local reporters are often the first on site to capture events as they unfold. We’ve begun testing features that surface local news in the free YouTube app for TV screens across 25 media markets around the United States, making it easy to access local news in the living room--our fastest growing screen. So far, local news has seen strong engagement, and we will be expanding it to dozens more markets like Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Kansas City.


Providing context to help people make their own decisions
We also believe users should be able to choose and make their own judgments about the information they consume along with context to inform their judgments. That’s why we’re rolling out a few new features that we will continue to build upon:


Giving users more sources of information on topical searches and videos
Starting today, users will begin seeing information from third parties, including Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica, alongside videos on a small number of well-established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation, like the moon landing and the Oklahoma City Bombing.


Investing in digital literacy education
Along with the Google News Initiative and Google.org, we have teamed up with the Poynter Institute, Stanford University, Local Media Association, and the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) to support MediaWise, a U.S.-based initiative designed to equip 1 million teens with digital literacy skills. Six incredible YouTube Creators, including John Green, Ingrid Nilsen, and Mark Watson, will be working with MediaWise to bring awareness to digital literacy and help educate teens.


We remain committed to working with the journalism community to build a more sustainable video ecosystem for news organizations. We know there is a lot of work to do, but we’re eager to provide a better experience to users who come to YouTube every day to learn more about what is happening in the world from a diversity of sources.


By Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer and Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer

The Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC) Study Jam series comes to India

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2k1bZslf950IXN-bbAwpNQPq-ax9fQtVdTwdMm8vIXUL4FmaI0jybUMkJBpVH-Jae10t-UGM_He79bILjGPlTw=w1340-h646-c Chetan Krishnaswamy Director Public Policy
Looking for an inroad into the world of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning? Now you can access practical -- and free -- training from Google experts


From helping farmers detect the onset of crop infections to enabling doctors diagnose the occurrence of diabetic blindness among millions, Artificial Intelligence is helping tackle challenges inventively across a range of sectors. At Google, we believe that AI has the potential to make apps and services more useful, while helping innovation among businesses and developers, be it in their own field or while taking on humanity’s big challenges.


In India the AI ecosystem is nascent but is developing rapidly. With companies of all sizes adopting AI in their solutions, there is a clear and present need for trained and technically-equipped developers to drive these AI-related challenges and projects. To help facilitate this, Google signed a Statement of Intent with NITI Aayog earlier this year to jointly work towards building the AI ecosystem in India.


One of the key initiatives of this collaboration is to train Indian developers in the field of Machine Learning. With this as the objective we are excited to  bring the Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC) Study Jam series to India this July.



This course intends to improve developers’ technical proficiency in machine learning, enabling them to apply cutting-edge techniques to help take on a range of practical challenges.


About MLCC


MLCC is Google’s flagship machine learning course, initially created for Google engineers. This course was taken up by more than 18,000 Googlers, and was recently made publicly available.  MLCC provides exercises, interactive visualizations, and instructional videos that anyone can use to learn and practice ML concepts.


What does the course cover?


MLCC covers numerous machine learning fundamentals, from  basic concepts such as loss function and gradient descent, then building through more advanced theories like classification models and neural networks. The programming exercises include the basics of TensorFlow -- our open-source machine learning framework -- and also feature succinct videos from Google machine learning experts. Participants will be able to read short text lessons, and play with educational gadgets devised by Google’s instructional designers and engineers.


Who should take this (free!) course?


MLCC is intended for those who wish to learn about ML from a practical, applied perspective that will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of the power of TensorFlow, and incorporate best practices into their everyday projects. This course is ideally suited to developers with basic machine learning knowledge, who are keen to gain experience in ML and TensorFlow.



Posted by Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director - Public Policy, Google India

Now available: new ways to explore with Google Maps

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yiKeF2cOWpr1Lis7QdDccqeQxSqJKN6HRAH0TilaXgh6rdC655qw9bbA2RZ_tFRkawVZwUd_bHngJ7H0G8satlHWa4sH4ZFyZxERLz3NcJI4J3aLdSNFp6fXHgpgNg_GXC4nFzDo Sophia Lin Senior Product Manager Google Maps

Last month, we introduced new ways to experience your city with Google Maps—helping you find the best spots to eat, drink, and play based on the things you’re into. Many of these features start rolling out worldwide today. Read on for seven tips on how you can use Google Maps to see your neighborhood in a whole new light:



1/ The redesigned Explore tab gives you quick recommendations for restaurants, bars, and cafes in any area you’re interested in. Whether you’re staying local or planning a trip, you can always find the perfect spot no matter where you are in the world.



2/ Find the best burger in town or track the top brunch spots in the city with trending lists from local experts and Google’s algorithms.

3/ Indulge your inner foodie on Android by automatically keeping track of your progress against any of the restaurants featured in the trending lists. So if you’re on a mission to try the 10 best tacos in your area and you’ve only tried 5, Google Maps will note that for you so you can get to the tacos pronto.

4/ Know what’s going on. On Android, the new Explore tab now surfaces the top events and activities happening in your area. You can see photos, descriptions, and filter by categories like “good for kids,” “cheap” or “indoor or outdoor” so you can find just the right activity to fit your mood.
The new Explore tab is now available to all Android and iOS users globally.

5/ Make plans faster. If you have Location History turned on, each restaurant or bar now features “Your match,” a numeric rating that tells you how likely you are to enjoy a place based on your own preferences—so you can save time scrolling through lists of reviews and quickly make a decision about where to go.  

6/ Tell Google Maps about your food and drink preferences so it can surface better dining recommendations as you eat your way around town (to do this, go to your Settings to select the types of cuisines and restaurants you like, along with what you’re not so into).

Your match is now available to Android users worldwide.

7/ Get inspired for your next culinary adventure. The new “For you” tab will keep you in the know about everything happening in areas you care about whether it’s near your home, work, or a city you visit frequently. Following a neighborhood allows you to instantly see if there’s a hot new restaurant in the area, a new cafe that’s a perfect match for your tastes, or if one of your favorite dining spots is in the news.
The For you tab is now available on Åndroid in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and Japan, with content ramping up this week.

To start exploring, update your Google Maps app from the App Store or Play Store today. Share your favorite list of restaurants with us on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #OnGoogleMaps, and make sure to follow @GoogleMaps for more tips on how you can use Google Maps to get around and discover your neighborhood.

By Sophia Lin, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps
 Sophia LinSenior Product Manager Google Maps

Introducing simpler brands and solutions for advertisers and publishers

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/D-rK-oPiFFRkK6kNHY1uJnpVkYsxx43j09pNjtIdj2rdzaXHhr2XYAf1xHD2kOQAkYPE2lkKymZjHUQ229K-k_krmBrEm_l_42Fb2mb8wM1Mxk-pI_0t1Fa3chSR_JtRxSPHSqBc Sridhar Ramaswamy Senior Vice President Ads & Commerce
We launched AdWords nearly 18 years ago with a simple goal—to make it easier for people to connect online with businesses. A search for eco-friendly stationery, quilting supplies, or for a service like a treehouse builder gave us an opportunity to deliver valuable ads that were useful and relevant in the moment. That idea was the start of our first advertising product, and led to the ads business we have today.


A lot has changed since then. Mobile is now a huge part of our everyday lives. People quickly switch from searching for products, to watching videos, browsing content, playing games and more. As a result, marketers have more opportunities to reach consumers across channels, screens and formats. The opportunity has never been more exciting, but it’s also never been more complex. Over the years, Google ads have evolved from helping marketers connect with people on Google Search, to helping them connect at every step of the consumer journey through text, video, display and more.  
That’s why today we are introducing simpler brands and solutions for our advertising products: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager. These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels. As part of this change, we are releasing new solutions that help advertisers get started with Google Ads and drive greater collaboration across teams.  


Google AdWords is becoming Google Ads


The new Google Ads brand represents the full range of advertising capabilities we offer today—on Google.com and across our other properties, partner sites and apps—to help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.  
For small businesses specifically, we’re introducing a new campaign type in Google Ads that makes it easier than ever to get started with online advertising. It brings the machine learning technology of Google Ads to small businesses and helps them get results without any heavy lifting—so they can stay focused on running their businesses. To learn more, visit this post.


We'll introduce more new campaign types at Google Marketing Live. Sign up to watch the livestream on July 10.


Stronger collaboration with Google Marketing Platform


We’re enabling stronger collaboration for enterprise marketing teams by unifying our DoubleClick advertiser products and the Google Analytics 360 Suite under a single brand: Google Marketing Platform.
We’ve heard from marketers that there are real benefits to using ads and analytics technology together, including a better understanding of customers and better business results. Google Marketing Platform helps marketers achieve their goals by building on existing integrations between the Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick Digital Marketing. The platform helps marketers plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. To learn more, visit the Google Marketing Platform blog.


As part of Google Marketing Platform, we’re announcing Display & Video 360. Display & Video 360 brings together features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center to allow creative, agency, and media teams to collaborate and execute ad campaigns end-to-end in a single place. We’ll share more details about Display & Video 360 in the coming weeks, including a demo during the keynote at Google Marketing Live.


Google Ad Manager: A unified platform


We recognize that the way publishers monetize their content has changed. With people accessing content on multiple screens, and with advertisers’ growing demand for programmatic access, publishers need to be able to manage their businesses more simply and efficiently. That’s why for the last three years, we’ve been working to bring together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a complete and unified programmatic platform under a new name–Google Ad Manager.
With this evolution, we’re excited to do even more for our partners—earning them more money, more efficiently, wherever people are watching videos, playing games or engaging with content, and however advertisers are looking to work with them. To learn more, visit the Google Ad Manager blog.


Transparency and controls people can trust


We know that the media and technology advertisers and publishers choose to use impacts the relationships they have with their customers. As always, our commitment is to ensure that all of our products and platforms set the industry’s highest standard in giving people transparency and choice in the ads they see. For example, we recently announced new Ads Settings and expanded Why this ad? across all of our services, and almost all websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.


You'll start to see the new Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager brands over the next month.


We’ll be sharing more about these changes—and many other new Ads, Analytics and Platforms solutions designed to help you grow your business—at Google Marketing Live. Register now to watch live on July 10, 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET.

By Sridhar Ramaswamy Senior Vice President, Ads & Commerce

Indie Games Accelerator: Calling indie game developers from Southeast Asia, India and Pakistan

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/E1Us7XJbGkQIMl6Y9OCajSkJvQYjBo8UoXKlj1kVoeS4p91Y7_vOuq2O895ZVmJsgJBXFFxk1Hsvp2PusKdgs9RRPVHbjCZ9_4itZ3XbicYE7GX5dsmRY-QDucGUB_130C-2L6TE Anuj Gulati Developer Marketing Manager Google Play
Do you believe you have what it takes to make the next big mobile game? If you do, listen up! We’re offering developers in Asia a chance to perfect your mobile game with Google Play’s first Indie Games Accelerator program. If your gaming startup is based in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand or Vietnam, and you want to supercharge your growth, you can learn more and apply for the Indie Games Accelerator by July 31.
We’re always looking for new ways to support developers. So, as a special edition of the Launchpad Accelerator, we’re announcing a new-four month Indie Gaming Accelerator to train promising developers from these countries in Asia so they can successfully build, scale, launch and market the next generation of hit mobile games.

Developers accepted into the program will be matched with the best of Google—our people, network, insights and technology—while attending two all-expenses-paid gaming bootcamps at the Google Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, where they will receive personalized mentorship from Google teams and industry experts. Additional benefits include Google Cloud Platform credits and invites to exclusive Google and industry events. We’ll announce the developers accepted into the program on August 8.
There are many passionate gamers in Asia. The talented mobile game developers in the region have a tremendous opportunity to build apps and deliver experiences that entertain, educate and inspire. We look forward to seeing you get your game on with your application!
By Anuj Gulati, Developer Marketing Manager, Google Play and Sami Kizilbash, Developer Relations Program Manager, Google

Offline sharing now 4 times faster in Files Go

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2Ja7DHb6KW2O0w-u7XcAqN1KmPnre48UnKIVLRmQ0Xd04EOrP7-9R6AVmScz1Vsrw3FnB2vKyUPUshWT4VnReNwv2PVzBapicnHRp24rF488440jSnQpK4iKwkeog6CCS_MHkeMO Stephen HughesSoftware Engineer Google
Over the past six months, Files Go has helped users free up space, find files faster and share files offline. Collectively, our users are saving 100 TB per day by cleaning up Junk Files or Good Morning messages, especially in India, the most popular country for Files Go usage.

Today, we are releasing a major upgrade to the nearby sharing feature, making it more secure and even faster while still not requiring any mobile data — a big time and cost saver for our users.
Here’s what you can expect in this update:
  • Easier to find and use: Nearby sharing is now available in its own dedicated tab called “Share.” This tab has a simplified and smoother interface, and it works on any Android phone from the latest Google Pixel back to Android 5.0 (Lollipop).
  • Faster connections: Thanks to improved connection techniques, the average time it takes to connect two phones is now just five seconds.
  • Faster transfers: Files Go picks the fastest method of sending files available on your phone, such as 5GHz Wi-Fi Direct, so you get the highest transfer speeds possible. Users have seen speeds up to 490 Mbps—that’s four times faster than before, or 100 original quality photos sent in less than five seconds.
  • More secure: Files Go helps you verify that you are connecting to the right person and encrypts all your transfers for additional security.
Give it a try with a friend and let us know what you think. Please send any thoughts our way by using the Feedback option in the app.

By Stephen Hughes, Software Engineer, NBU

Inviting students to participate in Code to Learn contest 2018

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/rCpKOFZ5jESk93aqi1AAmYjfl4dEN15Gm5nOrqZzrkeYZxN0hFsgEz9Q9vNRmrRy0ZAoPEZwSrDs9lWzG6Xx_r4vGylZoSOxLz8g3DhvNGJ0SplPMs1txFsXTm_VcPYYEdWXKwxZ Ashwani Sharma Head of University Relations and Computer Science Outreach Google
It’s time to let the coder in you come alive as the Code to Learn competition is back for its fifth edition. But, what is Code to Learn? Students from Class 5 to 10 from any school in India can be nominated by their school teacher to show their coding genius on Scratch or App Inventor to develop a fun Games, Animations, Story-telling or an Android app; without writing even one line of programming language code!


Over the years, Computer Science and Programming has evolved and become one of the strongest means of solving real-life problems. Be it helping underprivileged kids with book donations using an app, sending their friends innovative greetings through an app or making an app to help simplify learning for kids with dyslexia.

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 5 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, 2018. There are links to online tutorials for both Scratch and App Inventor on the contest site and are very easy to learn.


In addition to this, we will also host training programs for teachers who can further teach their students in the classrooms. Teachers can register for the training on this form. 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 ACM India and IIIT Delhi. ACM is the worldwide society for scientific and educational computing with an aim to advance Computer Science both as a science and as a profession. IIIT Delhi is a research-oriented university based in Delhi.

By Ashwani Sharma, Head of University Relations and Computer Science Outreach, Google India