Category Archives: Official Google Blog

Insights from Googlers into our topics, technology, and the Google culture

TAG Bulletin: Q2 2022

This bulletin includes coordinated influence operation campaigns terminated on our platforms in Q2 2022. It was last updated on June 9, 2022.

April

  • We terminated 138 YouTube channels and 2 Ads accounts as part of our investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Russia. The campaign was linked to a Russian consulting firm and was sharing content in Russian that was supportive of Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin and critical of NATO, Ukraine, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
  • We terminated 44 YouTube channels and 9 Ads accounts as part of our investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Russia. The campaign was linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and was sharing content in Russian, French, Arabic, and Chinese that was supportive of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Wagner Group’s activity in Ukraine and Africa.
  • We terminated 6 YouTube channels as part of our investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Russia. The campaign was linked to Russian state-sponsored entities and was sharing content in Russian that was supportive of pro-Russian activity in Ukraine and critical of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
  • We terminated 3 YouTube channels and 1 AdSense account and blocked 1 domain from eligibility to appear on Google News surfaces and Discover as part of our investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Slovakia and Germany. The campaign was sharing content in Slovak that was supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s claimed justifications for its invasion of Ukraine. We received leads from Mandiant that supported us in this investigation.
  • We terminated 37 YouTube accounts and 1 Ads account and blocked 2 domains from eligibility to appear on Google News surfaces and Discover as part of our investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Costa Rica. The campaign was linked to Noelix Media and was sharing content in Spanish that was critical of Costa Rican and Salvadoran politicians and political parties. Our findings are similar to findings reported by Meta.
  • We terminated 1,546 YouTube channels as part of our ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to China. These channels mostly uploaded spammy content in Chinese about music, entertainment, and lifestyle. A very small subset uploaded content in Chinese and English about China and U.S. foreign affairs. These findings are consistent with our previous reports.

Google News Showcase launches in Romania

Journalists and news publishers play a key role in helping us understand important topics as they unfold. Access to trustworthy information is important to all of us, and at Google we’re dedicated to supporting the reporters and publishers who work tirelessly to deliver us news.

Through Google News, Top Stories on Search and more, we help people find links to stories, and help publishers find readers. Beyond this, we invest in products, funding and programs to support the news industry with the Google News Initiative. That includes supporting 16 Romanian publishers through the Digital News Innovation Fund with 1.8M EUR in funding and providing emergency financial support to more than 50 publishers through the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2015, we’ve also provided training to close to 900 journalists in Romania to help them research, verify and visualize their stories.

Today we're announcing our latest initiative to support journalism in Romania by rolling out Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news publishers.

Google has signed partnerships with 16 national Romanian publications, including broadcasters and newswires, which provide important news coverage to people all over the country. The titles include Adevarul.ro, Agerpres, Descopera.ro, Digi24, Edupedu.ro, G4Media.ro, Gandul, HotNews.ro, iDevice, Mobilissimo.ro, News.ro, Profit.ro, Newsweek, StartupCafe.ro, StirileProTV.ro and Wall-Street.ro. We’ll continue to work with other news partners in the country to add more content in the future.

This GIF shows examples of News Showcase panels from publishers in Romania as they scroll through Google News. Publishers appearing include Digi24, StirileProTV.ro, Agerpres, HotNews.ro, Wall-Street.ro, G4Media.ro, Mobilissimo.ro, Gandul, Descopera.ro

An example of how News Showcase can look for some of our partners in Romania.

With this new experience, we give publishers a variety of News Showcase panel templates to use to give additional context to stories and add related articles, timelines and more. The panels give news publishers more direct control of their presentation and branding, helping them be more visible to their dedicated readers and to those who are just discovering them.

News Showcase panels can appear on Google News and Discover, and direct readers to the full articles on publishers’ websites, helping them deepen their relationships with readers. In addition to the revenue that comes directly from these more engaged readers, participating publishers will receive monthly licensing payments from Google.

“We are glad to sign this partnership for Google News Showcase as a new way to deliver trustworthy, fact-checked and original content to the public,” says Andrei Bereanda, Head of Digital, ProTV, the Romanian television station whose news website stirileprotv.ro offers national and global news. “ProTV Digital salutes and encourages any type of investment in quality mass media and we remain dedicated to helping readers and viewers get verified information easily and clearly, and on as many platforms as possible. Investing in trustworthy information for the general public is one of the best long-term investments in this day and age.”

"We are delighted to share our expertise and editorial voice through a modern visual experience such as Google News Showcase,” says Alina Gheorghiescu, Digital Marketing Manager, Wall-Street, a national business news company. “Wall-Street.ro is glad to be part of this product launch in Romania and proud to be selected as one of the first Romanian news outlets to deliver our quality content daily. We expect Google News Showcase to drive high-value traffic directly to our website, increase engagement with our users and help us develop a closer connection with our readers."

Since we launched News Showcase in October 2020, we’ve signed deals with more than 1,500 news publications around the world and have launched in 16 countries: India, Japan, Germany, Portugal, Brazil, Austria, the U.K., Australia, Czechia, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, Poland and now Romania, bringing more in-depth, essential news coverage to Google News and Discover users.

This image shows examples of how some publishers in Romania, including Adevarul.ro, G4Media.ro, HotNews.ro,and StirileProTV.ro will appear using News Showcase panels

An example of how News Showcase panels will look with some of our partners in Romania.

”We are very happy to use News Showcase for two editorial projects: Hotnews.ro, our flagship news website, and StartupCafe.ro, the entrepreneurial education website,” says Clarice Dinu, editor-in-chief of Hotnews, a nationwide online media publisher. “Although the websites are different in terms of traffic and audience, we found the idea of using a dedicated news distribution channel — Google News — on mobile devices to deliver certain stories curated by our daily incharge editors very useful.”

Google News Showcase is one of the many ways we invest in journalism, continuing years of support through our products and programs to help people access diverse information and enable publishers to thrive in a digital world.

Lessons from the first GNI Startups Lab Europe

How many early-stage media startups in Europe can you name? Probably not that many. And while Europe is a promising environment for new journalism outlets, the reality can be tough. Across the continent, media entrepreneurs face a fractured market with myriad different languages, cultures and media landscapes.

Luckily, plenty of entrepreneurs out there have the courage and stamina to venture into uncharted territory to tell the stories and serve the audiences that have been overlooked by traditional media.

Over the past six months, and as part of the GNI Startups Lab Europe, 10 media organizations have been exploring new ways of monetizing their work and learning how to make their news businesses financially sustainable. The program, which included training, funding and networking, was designed by the Google News Initiative (GNI) in partnership with Media Lab Bayern and the European Journalism Centre.

The first GNI Startups Lab Europe cohort came in with a wide variety of target audiences, such as catering to Arabic speakers in Spain, the Hungarian diaspora in Transylvania or the deaf community in France. The projects developed through this program ranged from investigative reporting on YouTube to a news app for children. The journalism startups are covering news deserts, improving media literacy and revealing new ways to meet the information needs of readers.

A road map for media visionaries

The journey of this first edition of GNI Startups Lab Europe has been documented in our Lab Recap Report. It provides background on how the Lab and its curriculum were designed, and on lessons — both successes and flops — shared by the media organizations that took part.

The report reveals the challenges that media entrepreneurs across Europe have in common, as well as their individual responses, their perseverance and their creativity. The insights are a valuable road map for other media visionaries trying to build sustainable businesses and provide inspiration for people supporting the future and resilience of the European media scene.

That said, the GNI Startups Lab Europe program has not found the magic formula for subscriber growth, nor does it claim to be the holy grail of online media monetisation.

Audience, subscription and revenue growth

While innovative media projects are succeeding, especially when paired with a solid business model, the startups still face the challenge of converting a loyal audience into a paying one.

A major focus of the program has been to improve these organizations’ understanding of their audience through surveys, interviews and dedicated strategy sessions — for short and long-term audience engagement. Some startups experimented with partnerships and events, while others adjusted the balance between free and premium content.

Recorder, an independent video journalism platform in Romania, worked on its monetization strategy for YouTube, which helped double its revenue. Mensagem de Lisboa, the only digital media catering to residents of the Portuguese capital, found an untapped audience in the city’s affluent expats and is planning to expand to other metropolitan areas. Časoris, an award-winning online newspaper for children in Slovenia, has focused on TikTok, with videos regularly going viral and leading to a 27% increase in audience size during the Lab.

These examples corroborate the report's conclusion that the Lab gave participants the opportunity to go back to the drawing board, question their decisions and re-evaluate what made sense for the business side of journalism. They also learned to embrace experimentation without the fear of failing, plus a real support network was created among journalists who no longer dread talk of KPIs or funnels.

Land cover data just got real-time

Our planet is changing dramatically in ways that are visible even from space. These changes are in part because of climate change amplifying environmental disturbances, like wildfires and floods, and human activity, like deforestation and urban development. Detailed information about these changes and their impact on people, the climate, and ecosystems can help governments and researchers develop helpful solutions and minimize their effects on issues like climate change, food insecurity and loss of biodiversity.

Historically, it’s been difficult to access detailed, up-to-date land cover data which documents how much of a region is covered with different land and water types such as wetlands, forests, agricultural crops, trees, urban development and more.

To help turn satellite imagery into more useful information for quantifying change, we worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to create Dynamic World. Powered by Google Earth Engine and AI Platform, Dynamic World provides global, near real-time land cover data at a ten-meter resolution, giving an unprecedented level of detail about what's on the land and how it's being used — whether it’s forests in the Amazon, agriculture in Asia, urban development in Europe or seasonal water resources in North America. With this information, people — like scientists and policymakers — can monitor and understand land and ecosystems so they can make more accurate predictions and effective plans to protect our planet in the future.

A more detailed understanding of earth’s land than ever before

Currently, most existing datasets assign a single land cover type to an area of land — like trees, built-up, crops or snow — based on what’s most prominent in a satellite image combined with an expert’s determination of the land cover. So current datasets might classify a satellite image of a city as ‘built-up,’ but visit any city and you’ll see our world is far more dynamic. While you might see lots of buildings, you’ll also see trees or even snow on the ground from a recent storm.

To create a more accurate understanding of land cover with Dynamic World, our partners at WRI identified the nine most critical land cover types we wanted to classify: water, flooded vegetation, built-up areas, trees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrub/scrub, and snow/ice. Dynamic World uses our AI and cloud computing to detect combinations of different land cover types and make conclusions about how likely it is for each of the nine types to be present in every pixel (about 1,100 square feet of land) of a satellite image.

This level of insight into how land is being used can help public, private and non-profit decision makers better understand what’s happening to the world’s land. With this knowledge, they can develop plans to protect, manage and restore land, and monitor the effectiveness of those plans using alert systems to notify when unforeseen land changes are taking place.

As Craig Hanson, Vice President of Food, Forests, Water and the Ocean at the World Resources Institute, explains: “The global land squeeze pressures us to find smarter, efficient, and more sustainable ways to use land. If the world is to produce what is needed from land, protect the nature that remains and restore some of what has been lost, we need trusted, near real-time monitoring of every hectare of the planet.”

A near real time, regularly updating dataset

Not only is our world more dynamic than individual land types, it’s also constantly changing. Current global land cover maps can take months to produce, and typically only provide land cover data on a monthly or annual basis. With our AI model analyzing Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images as they become available, over 5,000 Dynamic World images are produced every day, providing land cover data dating back to June 2015 to as recently as two days ago.

This means that not only is the land cover information in Dynamic World more detailed, but it's also more timely within any given day, week or month than existing datasets. This level of detail allows scientists and policymakers to detect and quantify the extent of recent events anywhere on the globe — such as snowstorms, wildfires or volcanic eruptions — within days.

A gif shows satellite imagery translated into Dynamic World imagery with lots of green area indicating tree coverage before the fire and most of that area turning yellow indicating shrub/scrub after the fire.

Satellite imagery translated into Dynamic World imagery showing land in El Dorado County, California changing from trees, indicated in green, to shrub/scrub, indicated in yellow, days after the Caldor Fire burned 221,775 acres of land beginning August 14, 2021.

A gif shows satellite imagery and Dynamic World imagery of the Okavango Delta in Botswana with increasing green and blue coloring to show changes in land cover as the delta floods in July and August and then dries from September to October

Sentinel-2 satellite imagery (left) and Dynamic World dataset (right) show typical seasonal changes in the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Dynamic World allows researchers to build their own maps based on the outputs of our machine learning model, a major advancement in mapmaking. Researchers can combine local information with the data from Dynamic World to produce a new map, for example a map that analyzes crop harvests between particular dates. Dynamic World is also useful for understanding longer-term trends of seasonal ecosystem change, as seen in the Okavango Delta, an area that attracts thirsty wildlife when it floods in July and August and then dries from September to October.

We’re excited to put this open, freely available dataset and the methodology behind it into the hands of scientists, researchers, governments and companies. Together, we can make wiser decisions to protect, manage and restore our forests, nature and ecosystems.

Dynamic World is one of the largest global-scale land cover datasets produced to date, and is the first of its kind at 10 meter resolution in near real-time. A peer-reviewed paper about Dynamic World was published today in Nature Scientific Data. Explore the data at dynamicworld.app and access Dynamic World in Google Earth Engine and on Resource Watch.

Expanding our efforts to combat financial fraud in ads

Combating financial fraud in advertising is a top priority. And to do our part in this cross-industry effort, we’re constantly developing new tools and policies that help better protect the people who use our products and our advertising partners from bad actors.

Today we’re updating Google’s financial products and services policy to expand our verification program for financial services advertisers to new countries and markets. This measure creates a new layer of security against fraudsters and will help further safeguard our network from financial scams.

We first launched this program in the UK in September 2021, where financial services advertisers are already required to demonstrate that they’re authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the limited exemptions described on the UK Financial Services verification page. Since we launched this policy in the UK, we’ve seen a pronounced decline in reports of ads promoting financial scams. The success of this program in the UK demonstrates that this is a meaningful and impactful solution to safeguarding people online and gives us the confidence to expand verification to additional countries.

We’ll be rolling out this policy in phases, beginning with Australia, Singapore and Taiwan. As part of the verification process, financial services advertisers in these markets will need to demonstrate that they are authorized by their relevant financial services regulator, and have completed Google’s advertiser verification program in order to begin promoting their products and services. Advertisers will be able to apply for verification at the end of June, and the policy will go into effect on August 30, 2022. Advertisers that have not completed the new verification process by this date will no longer be allowed to promote financial services.

We work tirelessly to make sure the ads we serve are safe and trustworthy, and we know that partnering and collaborating with government regulators is critical to our success. That’s why we’re closely coordinating with regulators in these three markets to make sure this program is effective at scale. In the coming months, we plan to further expand these verification requirements to advertisers in additional countries and regions.

This policy is just the latest step in our longstanding effort to tackle online fraud. We have robust policies in place to prohibit bad actors from deceiving people through tactics such as phishing, using clickbait, or providing misleading information about a product, service or business. We also have strict rules about how advertisers can market financial products such as loans and debt services. Our teams continue to vigorously enforce these policies and combat scammers, using both machine learning and human reviewers to block bad ads. In 2021 alone, we blocked or removed more than 58.9 million ads for violating our financial services policies. And in 2020, we launched our advertiser verification program that will require Google advertisers to verify and disclose information about their businesses, such as where they operate and what they’re selling or promoting. This transparency feature is now live in more than 180 countries and helps people learn more about the company and services behind a specific ad.

We remain committed to this effort and will continue to collaborate with industry and government organizations to lead on necessary changes that help fight evolving tactics from bad actors.

Our commitment to Latin America’s digital future

Editor’s note: You can also read this blog inSpanishandPortuguese.

I’ve always believed technology is a powerful enabler for businesses and communities. During the pandemic, we’ve seen how digital tools have helped create jobs and make economies more resilient and sustainable. This is especially true in emerging markets, where an entrepreneurial spirit and new pathways for innovation can unleash enormous economic opportunity.

At Google, we see that potential today in Latin America. Communities have been hit hard by the pandemic, and closing digital access gaps will be vital to an inclusive recovery. At the same time, according to a new report from the Economist, increased investment and a policy focus on AI technologies can unlock new opportunities, from health care and sustainable agriculture to financial services and more.

As we shared in our Digital Sprinters report, digital transformation will require investment by governments and the private sector in infrastructure, people, technological innovation and public policies. In Latin America, realizing the full potential of digital technologies could generate an annual economic impact of up to $1.37 trillion by 2030 in six of the region’s largest economies, or 23% of these countries’ combined GDPs.

We’ve been investing in Latin America over the last 17 years, and today we’re announcing a five-year, $1.2 billion commitment to the region. We will focus on four areas where we believe we can best help the region to thrive: digital infrastructure, digital skills, entrepreneurship and inclusive, sustainable communities.

Investing in digital infrastructure

A subsea cable runs across the beach and into the ocean in Chile.

Curie landed in Valparaíso, Chile in 2019 and was the first subsea cable to connect to Chile in 19 years.

We’ve been investing to improve connectivity and increase Latin America’s access to digital services, including Google products like Search, Gmail and YouTube, as well as Google Cloud. The Firmina subsea cable, named after Brazilian abolitionist Maria Firmina dos Reis, will be the world's largest subsea cable, capable of operating from a single power source at one end of the cable if needed. When completed in 2023, it will run from the U.S. to Argentina, with additional landings in Brazil and Uruguay. Firmina follows three other significant cable investments in Latin America — Monet, Tannat and Curie — which together bring more reliable connectivity to the region.

Our Google Cloud Regions in Santiago, Chile, and São Paulo, Brazil, are giving businesses access to compute power and services that enable them to succeed in the digital economy. For example, Tembici, a Brazilian startup that offers bike sharing services in major cities across Latin America, runs its operations on Google Cloud — supporting its regional expansion.

Looking ahead, our Cloud Regions will continue to help more organizations accelerate their digital transformation and build towards long-term growth. We will also increase our engineering footprint in Brazil. These new roles — with a focus on essential areas like privacy and security — will help us create better products for the region and the world.

Expanding opportunity through digital skills

Digital skills are key to unlocking opportunities for the next generation. Through our Grow with Google program and Google.org grantees, we’ve trained nearly eight million people across Latin America in digital skills since 2017.

To build on this momentum, today we’re announcing that we’ll provide Google Career Certificate scholarships to one million people in Latin America. This training will help people access well-paying jobs in high-growth fields.

In photo on left, women look at the camera at a Grow with Google event. On photo on right, a large crowd attends an event in a conference room as a person speaks on stage.

Our Grow with Google program has trained nearly eight million people in Latin American in digital skills since 2017.

Supporting startups and small businesses

There is huge momentum behind tech entrepreneurship throughout Latin America. When we opened our Google for Startups campus in Brazil in 2016, there were no “unicorns,” startups valued at $1 billion or more, in the region. Today, there are 35, including 13 unicorns that have been part of Google for Startups programs. With investment, resources and training from Google for Startups, we have supported more than 450 startups in the region. These startups have gone on to raise more than $9 billion in investments, creating 25,000 jobs.

One example is Oliver Pets, an Argentinian startup that, with support from Google for Startups, was able to launch virtual veterinary care through their app and expand to Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

We’re also seeing how our products and services are helping small businesses thrive in difficult times. When Fátima Álvarez, the co-founder of Mexican startup Someone Somewhere, closed her retail shops during the pandemic, she turned to digital tools like Google Workspace and Google Ads to keep her clothing business running online.

Building more inclusive and sustainable communities

Through our philanthropic arm, Google.org, we’ve been supporting organizations like Laboratoria in Peru, Asociación Colnodo in Colombia and Instituto Rede Mulher Empreendedora in Brazil to make sure underserved communities also benefit from digital transformation.

Today Google.org is announcing $300 million over the next five years, comprised of $50 million in cash grants and $250 million in donated ads, to support nonprofits focused on areas like sustainability and economic opportunity for women and young people. For example, a $2 million Google.org grant to Pro Mujer will help Indigenous women-led businesses in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras access microloans and digital skills training.

In photo on left two people with laptops smile at the camera. In photo on right, people attend a graduation ceremony and are raising their arms as they cheer.

Through Google.org, we’ve supported Laboratoria, a nonprofit in Peru, to help women access digital skills training.

Across these commitments, we are partnering with governments, entrepreneurs and businesses to support sustainable, resilient and equitable growth. It’s exciting to see Latin America emerge as a hub of innovation, and we look forward to creating even more economic opportunities for those who call it home.

Get some fresh air outdoors with Google

As temperatures heat up and summer officially begins across the United States, many of us are taking the opportunity to explore the great outdoors. If you have an adventure on the horizon, here are two ways you can use Google tools to stay safe and healthy during your summer activities.

Check the air quality before you head out

When you're visiting a new place or planning outdoor activities, it can be helpful to know the air quality conditions — like whether it’s unusually smoggy. Check out the air quality layer on Google Maps for both Android and iOS, to help you make more informed decisions about whether it’s safe to go on a hike or other outdoor adventures. You’ll see Air Quality Index (AQI), a measure of how healthy (or unhealthy) the air is, along with guidance for outdoor activities, when the information was last updated, and links to learn more.

The air quality layer shows trusted data from government agencies, including theEnvironmental Protection Agency in the U.S. We are also showing air quality information fromPurpleAir, a low-cost sensor network which gives a more hyperlocal view of conditions. To add the air quality layer to your map, simply tap on the button in the top right corner of your screen, then select Air Quality under Map details.

You can also view air quality information from PurpleAir on Nest displays and speakers. The broad coverage of PurpleAir sensors means significantly more people in the U.S. will be able to access vital air quality information directly from their Nest devices.

Two smartphone screens showing the air quality layer on Google Maps

Be prepared during wildfire season

In recent years, wildfires have intensified and increased across the United States and around the world. Google Search interest in “Best air filters for wildfire smoke” and “Best mask for wildfire smoke” has doubled over the past year in the U.S. As wildfire season approaches, these Google features can help you safely navigate wildfires.

Before you head out, turn on the wildfire layer in Google Maps to see more details about active fires in the area thanks to our partnership with the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Or, for larger wildfires, you can use Search to look up "wildfires near me", and we'll surface associated air quality information along with useful information about the fire. In the coming months, we’re also adding smoke data across the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to our air quality information on Google Search.

A smartphone screen showing air quality information on Google Search

We collaborate closely with partners in the weather and air quality space to surface helpful and authoritative information when you need it most. As you head out on hikes, camping trips and other outdoor adventures, we hope these tools help you feel safe and informed so you can enjoy the summer.

Source: The Keyword


How this engineer got the career boost she needed

Saskia Bobinska was excited when she came across the application for the Women Developers Academy (WDA) program in Europe. After spending two years in isolation, thanks to the pandemic and having multiple back surgeries, she was looking for a way to advance her career in tech. She thought the WDA — a global program run by Women Techmakers to help technical women become better speakers and bring more diversity to tech stages — would be a great first step towards this goal.

One of the first assignments was to write her own speaker bio. As a self-taught frontend developer who uses JavaScript, NextJS and React, she felt a bit hesitant to share her story. “To be honest, I thought that my story was not important enough,” she tells us. But after a few WDA training sessions and encouragement from her mentors, business strategist Kamila Wosińska, Dart and Flutter Google Developer Expert (GDE) Majid Hajian and Web Technologies GDE Anuradha Kumarii, Saskia’s confidence was boosted. She excitedly set out to write a LinkedIn post about a mobile app on which she had been working.

Not long after the post went live, Saskia was approached by one of the companies she had mentioned. A few meetings lead to interviews and within a few months, Saskia was offered a job on their team. “I never would’ve thought that this was possible when I started coding three years ago,” Saskia says.

Looking back on the experience, Saskia is positively surprised by the speed with which she was able to transition her career from social media to engineering. “I’d have given myself two years before applying to Sanity, but WDA accelerated that,” she says. “I found my voice within the tech industry because of the community and WDA, which gave me a push toward it.”

Going through the WDA also helped Saskia realize that her “soft” skills — communication, leadership and confidence — are just as important as her hard skills for excelling in tech. “Having the ability to go out and speak gave me an approach to finding a more intermediate-level engineering role,” she says. “I have hard skills, but my soft skills are what brought me to this company that shares my priorities, because they knew who I was.”

She also recognized the importance of having a supportive community. During the WDA, she was excited to see women supporting each other so enthusiastically within the male-dominated tech industry. “Emotional support and empathy, especially in a professional environment, help you stay in balance and enable you to do your best,” she says. “Always help and support others, because safe communities are not just found, they are made.”

Learn more about Women Techmakersand become a member to stay up to date on all our initiatives including the Women Developers Academy.

A bigger piece of the pi: Finding the 100-trillionth digit

The 100-trillionth decimal place of π (pi) is 0. A few months ago, on an average Tuesday morning in March, I sat down with my coffee to check on the program that had been running a calculation from my home office for 157 days. It was finally time — I was going to be the first and only person to ever see the number. The results were in and it was a new record: We’d calculated the most digits of π ever — 100 trillion to be exact.

Calculating π — or finding as many digits of it as possible — is a project that mathematicians, scientists and engineers around the world have worked on for thousands of years, myself included. The well-known approximation 3.14 is believed to have been found by Archimedes around the year 250 BCE. Computer scientist Donald Knuth wrote "human progress in calculation has traditionally been measured by the number of decimal digits of π" in his book “The Art of Computer Programming” (Dr. Knuth even wrote about me in the book). In the past, people would manually — meaning without calculators or computers — determine the digits of pi. Today, we use computers to do this calculation, which helps us learn how much faster they’ve become. It’s one of the few ways to measure how much progress we're making across centuries, including before the invention of electronic computers.

An illustration of pie crust stretching from the Earth to the moon. Above it reads: "100 trillion inches of pie crust stretches from Earth to the moon an back ~3,304 times."

As a developer advocate at Google Cloud, part of my job is to create demos and run experiments that show the cool things developers can do with our platform; one of those things, you guessed it, is using a program to calculate digits of pi. Breaking the record of π was my childhood dream, so a few years ago I decided to try using Google Cloud to take on this project. I also wanted to see how much data processing these computers could handle. In 2019, I became the third woman tobreak this world record, with a π calculation of 31.4 trillion digits.

But I couldn’t stop there, and I decided to try again. And now we have a new record of 100 trillion decimal places. This shows us, again, just how far computers have come: In three years, the computers have calculated three times as many numbers. What’s more, in 2019, it took the computers 121 days to get to 31.4 million digits. This time, it took them 157 days to get to 100 trillion — more than twice as fast as the first project.

A illustrated chart showing how quickly we reached the new pi record compared to the last time in 2019.

But let’s look back farther than my 2019 record: The first world record of computing π with an electronic computer was in 1949, which calculated 2,037 decimal places. It took humans thousands of years to reach the two-thousandth place, and we've reached the 100 trillionth decimal just 73 years later. Not only are we adding more digits than all the numbers in the past combined, but we're spending less and less time hitting new milestones.

An illustration of a person holding a phone and tapping on the screen. Above it reads: "The 82,000 terabytes of data processed during calculations is the equivalent of 160,156 Pixel 6 Pros with max storage (512 GB)."

I used the same tools and techniques as I did in 2019 (for more details, we have a technical explanation in the Google Cloud blog), but I was able to hit the new number more quickly thanks to Google Cloud’s infrastructure improvements in compute, storage and networking. One of the most remarkable phenomena in computer science is that every year we have made incremental progress, and in return we have reaped exponentially faster compute speeds. This is what’s made a lot of the recent computer-assisted research possible in areas like climate science and astronomy.

An illustration of a person with a megaphone. Above it reads: "If you read all 100 trillion digits out loud, one second at a time, it would take you 3,170,929 years to read the whole thing."

Back when I hit that record in 2019 — and again now — many people asked "what's next?" And I’m happy to say that the scientific community just keeps counting. There's no end to π, it’s a transcendental number, meaning it can't be written as a finite polynomial. Plus, we don't see an end to the evolution of computing. Like the introduction of electronic computers in the 1940s and discovery of faster algorithms in the 1960-80s, we could still see another fundamental shift that keeps the momentum going.

So, like I said: I’ll just keep counting.

¡Que aproveche! Spain’s culinary heritage

Food is at the very heart of Spanish culture, with traditional recipes being passed down from one generation to the next across the nation’s regional communities. It’s a fragile heritage though, and one that can be easily lost in the rapid pace of today’s world.

To preserve this heritage, Google Arts & Culture, working with curator and gastronomic researcher María Llamas, and the Real Academia de Gastronomía, presents Spanish Food: Cooking Memories. Following on from Spain: Open Kitchen – our first-ever virtual exhibit about food culture – this is the second installment dedicated to Spanish cuisine.

The focus here turns to those who’ve kept recipes alive through cooking at home, in convents, or in culinary societies. From the traditional recipes of Spanish grandmothers to the treasures hidden in family cookbooks, Spanish Food: Cooking Memories seeks to preserve this heritage for the future.

To get started on your culinary journey, here are five things to explore right away:

Learn recipes from those who’ve spent a lifetime cooking

There’s no better way to learn a recipe than by watching an experienced hand cook it themselves. That’s exactly what you can do here. Start with learning how to bake Roscón De Reyes – or Spanish King’s Cake - with entrepreneur Clara María González de Amezúa and her grandchildren.

Discover a project digitizing old family cookbooks

Old family cookbooks of handwritten recipes are a rich repository for Spain’s culinary heritage. But how many of them are crumbling away on dusty bookshelves and in damp cellars? Happily, there are people digitizing them so their secrets can be preserved for future generations. Discover Los Recetarios (Cookbooks) – a project dedicated to doing just that.

Spend a day cooking with Catalan women

La Cuina a Sils is a culinary society dedicated to recovering and preserving the gastronomic memory of Sils – a town with a rich food heritage in the Girona province of Catalonia. In this story, you’ll spend a day cooking escudella (a meat stew) with the remarkable women who run the society, and learn of the extraordinary community they’ve built.

Delve into the story of chocolate made in Spanish convents

Home kitchens aren't the only places where traditional recipes are preserved in Spain. In the convents of the order of the Clarisas, the nuns have a history of baking and making confectionary – from sponge cakes and muffins to chocolate and donuts. In this story, you’ll learn how these nuns turned to making artisanal chocolate out of necessity – and how it transformed their lives forever.

Test your knowledge through gastronomic quizzes

When you’ve explored the many culinary treasures of Spanish Food: Cooking Memories, test your knowledge with these three quizzes about Spanish gastronomy: Which Spanish produce originated from the Americas? Can you identify different kinds of seafood? Would you know what to eat at certain celebrations?

  • Photograph of an old lady, with white hair, dressed in green and purple, sitting in front of a table and smiling at the camera.

    Discover how to bake a “Roscón de Reyes” (Spanish King’s Cake) with entrepreneur Clara María González de Amenzúa and her grandchildren.

  • Photograph of hands holding a handwritten notebook with recipes. A page is being turned.

    Sometimes recipe books are handed down from generation to generation of the same family. This is the case with Catalina Ubis' recipe book, compiled by five generations of women.

  • Group photograph of six elderly women posing in front of a shelf with books They are dressed in white aprons printed with the words "La Cuina a Sils.”

    La Cuina a Sils is a culinary society dedicated to recovering and preserving the gastronomic memory of Sils – a town with a rich food heritage in the Girona province of Catalonia.

  • Photograph of a nun in a light blue habit, seated at a table placing small samples of chocolate on a baking tray.

    The Clarisas nuns in Belorado, Burgos, have expanded their traditional range of cakes and pastries and taken up chocolate making.

  • Ingredients are placed on a wooden table: on the right, beans on a wooden spoon; on the left from top to bottom: a glass with oil, saffron threads, bay leaf, paprika, peppercorns, a clove of garlic, parsley and clams.

    Beans with clams is a succulent Asturian stew that combines ingredients from both the sea and the mountains: fava beans grown in the fields, and clams from the Bay of Biscay.

Of course, there is much more to discover in Spanish Food: Cooking Memories. With 38 exhibits curated by gastronomical experts, three video collaborations with people who have spent a lifetime cooking and more than 1000 photographs taken specially to illustrate this project, you’ll experience Spanish food culture in all its richness.

We invite everyone to explore the treasures of Spanish culinary heritage. Have a taste of the project at g.co/cookingmemories and on the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS or Android.