9 apps to help kids sharpen their coding skills

Coding is a skill that’s now part of just about every discipline — and what’s more, it’s fun for kids to learn, and easy for parents and teachers to add to lessons at home or school. As kids get ready to go back to school and Chromebooks are once again on desks at home and in the classroom, it’s a good time to boost students’ coding knowledge. At Google, we believe every student deserves the chance to explore, advance and succeed in computer science. Practical computer science skills can help students learn and create, and bring more relevance to nearly any subject, from history to literature to current events. 

Thanks to the devices and apps below, students of all ages can be engaged while learning to code. Fortunately, there are coding apps for just about every grade and skill level. Here are our suggestions for apps and devices to check out this fall, whether you’re in a classroom or at home with learners.

Coding apps to try in the classroom and at home

Whether it’s creating a video game as an assignment in science class, or building a website for a side project (lemonade stand, anyone?), there are coding apps for the whole family and the whole class. Families can find all of these apps on the Google Play Store, and schools can find out more information on the Chromebook App Hub. 


Beginning to code

  • Cloud Stop Motion (Play Store) is a fun stop-motion and animation movie creator. Cloud Stop Motion enables kids to work with animations on a zoomable, scrollable timeline. Sound effects, music, titles, credits and speech bubbles can be added before rendering to an MP4 movie. An extensive library of audio, backgrounds and styles included, this app is great for students and parents alike.

  • Grasshopper(Web app) is a coding app for beginning learners that uses games to build skills with JavaScript. Learners can move up through progressively challenging levels to refine their coding prowess.

  • Scratch Jr(Play Store) is tailor-made for younger learners. Scratch Jr is actually based on a programming language that teaches kids how to program by creating their own interactive stories and games. 

  • Tynker Jr (Play Store) is perfect for children just learning to read. Children ages 5-7 can learn the fundamentals of coding by connecting picture blocks to move their characters.

More advanced coders

  • Bloxels (Play Store, App Hub) lets anyone build a video game with their own characters and art. Game worlds are quick to build with built-in logic, triggers and actions.

  • Codecademy(Play Store) Codecademy creates an engaging, flexible, and accessible way to learn to code online, making it possible for anyone to gain skills for employability and build something meaningful with technology. Access hundreds of courses in subjects like web development and data science, as well as in-demand languages like Python, CSS, and JavaScript.

  • Piper Make (Play Store, App Hub) is a drag-and-drop coding platform for the Pico, the newest microcontroller board from Raspberry Pi. Using Piper’s hardware packages available online, the Piper Make portal offers new narrative-based tutorials, projects, and ways to start building and coding technology.

  • Replit(Play Store, App Hub) is a simple, yet powerful online coding platform. It's perfect for beginners, who are coding for the first time, but also scales to the needs of teachers and professional programmers with decades of experience. Replit supports all programming languages, including Python, Java, Javascript + HTML/CSS, and C/C++, and runs on every device, including Chromebooks. It combines an IDE (integrated development environment) with a debugger, built-in testing/autograding, and hosting tools to build websites and applications.

  • Tynker(Play Store, App Hub) features block-based coding challenges that help learners move on to more complex skills like Python coding and advanced computer science. It even offers AP Computer Science courses.

Devices for coding, creating and anything in between

With new devices for learning anywhere or advanced use, students and families can find devices for more robust needs such as content creation and editing, coding, and running apps in virtualized environments simultaneously with large video calls. 

There’s a device for everyone in the family or classroom. This includes devices like the Lenovo 500e Gen 3, which works in both laptop and tablet mode and has a rear-facing camera and built-in stylus. It also includes the spill-resistant HP Chromebook x360 11 G4 EE, the Acer Chromebook Spin 512, or the Lenovo 300e Gen 3 with its 3:2 ratio, ideal for reading and working on Docs more comfortably, an Always Connected LTE enabled device with dual cameras. You can find all the latest in this handy guide for schools, or on chromebook.com. 

To learn more about Google’s commitment to closing equity gaps in computer science education and discover lessons, research, scholarship opportunities and more, visit our Code with Google page. Educators can also find CS resources on our website and on the Chromebook App Hub. And for more resources for families, with guidance on everything from classroom tools to screen time best practices, visit families.google.com, and sign up for Family Link for parents to help set digital ground rules on their school or personal device.

Feed-based Extensions Migration Reminder and Opt Out Instructions

As previously announced, all ad extensions are migrating to the new Asset-based extension paradigm. You must update extensions support in your implementation and migrate existing Feed-based extensions to Asset-based extensions. See the migration schedule for all the important migration and sunset dates.

The first automatic migration will start on October 20, 2021 and will take several weeks to complete. You have a choice to migrate your own extensions, allow the automatic migration to proceed, or to opt client accounts out of it. During the migration, Feed-based Callout, Promotion, Sitelink, and Structured Snippet extensions within client accounts will be copied into new Asset-based extensions. The new Asset-based extensions will then serve instead of the Feed-based extensions.


What will be the impact of the automatic migration?

After an account has been migrated, there will be a new Asset instance for each Feed-based Callout, Promotion, Sitelink, and Structured Snippet extension. The new Assets will be linked to the same ad groups, campaigns, and customers as the Feed-based extensions from which they were copied. The new Assets will have new IDs, and there will be no connection between Assets created during the automatic migration and the original Feeds, including historic metrics. All subsequent extension-related metrics will only be accessible from the asset_field_type_view report. Additionally, you will no longer be able to issue CREATE or MUTATE requests that affect Callout, Promotion, Sitelink or Structured Snippet extensions in the account through the following services:

Service API Reference
ExtensionFeedItemService Google Ads API
AdGroupExtensionSettingService AdWords API Google Ads API
CampaignExtensionSettingService AdWords API Google Ads API
CustomerExtensionSettingService AdWords API Google Ads API
FeedService AdWords API AdWords API
FeedItemService AdWords API Google Ads API
FeedMappingService AdWords API Google Ads API
AdGroupFeedService AdWords API Google Ads API
CampaignFeedService AdWords API Google Ads API
CustomerFeedService AdWords API Google Ads API
GoogleAdsService Google Ads API
BatchJobService AdWords API Google Ads API


If you choose to allow the automatic migration to proceed, you will know that an account has been migrated when any MUTATE or CREATE request to the above listed services affecting Callout, Promotion, Sitelink, or Structured Snippet extensions returns an error.


What will be the impact of opting out?

You can opt out individual customer accounts from the October automatic migration. Opting out will only defer the automatic migration until the second automatic migration begins on February 15, 2022. If you choose to opt out, no resources will be created or modified in opted out accounts during the October automatic migration, and only the opted out accounts will be able to continue to issue CREATE and MUTATE requests after the October automatic migration.

You cannot opt out of the February 15, 2022 automatic migration. All remaining Feed-based extensions will be automatically migrated starting February 15, 2022 as described in the migration schedule. After this second automatic migration, all CREATE and MUTATE requests affecting Feed-based extensions will return errors.

What do I need to do?

We strongly recommend that you migrate your extensions yourself if feasible. Please follow our extension migration documentation for guidance on migrating your own extensions. Be sure to remove the Feed-based extension once you have successfully copied an extension to an Asset to avoid duplication during the automatic migration.

If you choose to allow the automatic migration to proceed, you need to only update your implementations to detect when an account has been migrated and to thereafter switch over to managing Assets instead of Feeds.


If you choose to opt out, the automatic migration will make no changes to the opted out accounts. Your existing API implementations will continue to work until the second automatic migration begins on February 15, 2022. To opt out, you must complete this form with the following:
  • A contact email at which you can be reached should any issues arise during the opt out process.
  • The developer token that you use to manage the accounts.
  • Acknowledgements of the effects of opting out.
  • An uploaded text file containing the customer IDs that you wish to opt out, one per line. If you need to generate a list of customer IDs, we recommend utilizing the GetAccountHierarchy example in each client library’s AccountManagement directory. This example will return the resource names of all accounts reachable from a given manager account.
The form will open for submissions on August 30, 2021. Note that the developer token must have been used to issue requests on the customer account after July 16, 2021. The form will close on October 13, 2021.


If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].
- Andrew Burke, Google Ads API Team

Ask a Techspert: How do Nest Cams know people from pets?

The other day when I was sitting in my home office, I got an alert from my Nest Doorbell that a package had been delivered — and right from my phone, I could see it sitting on the porch. Moments later, my neighbor dropped by to return a piece of mail that had accidentally gone to her — and again, my Doorbell alerted me. But this time, it alerted me that someone (rather than something) was at the door. 

When I opened my door and saw my neighbor standing next to the package, I wondered…how does that little camera understand the world around it? 

For an answer, I turned to Yoni Ben-Meshulam, a Staff Software Engineer who works on the Nest team. 

Before I ask you how the camera knows what’s a person and what’s a vehicle, first I want to get into how they detect anything at all?

Our cameras run something called a perception algorithm which detects objects (people, animals, vehicles, and packages) that show up in the live video stream. For example, if a package is delivered within one of your Activity Zones, like your porch, the camera will track the movement of the delivery person and the package, and analyze all of this to give you a package delivery notification. If you have Familiar Face Alerts on and the camera detects a face, it analyzes the face on-device and checks whether it matches anyone you have identified as a Familiar Face. And the camera recognizes new faces as you identify and label them.

The camera also learns what its surroundings look like. For example, if you have a Nest Cam in your living room, the camera runs an algorithm that can identify where there is likely a TV, so that the camera won’t think the people on the screen are in your home. 

Perception algorithms sound a little like machine learning. Is ML involved in this process?

Yes — Nest cameras actually have multiple machine learning models running inside of them. One is an object detector that takes in video frames and outputs a bounding box around objects of interest, like a package or vehicle. This object detector was trained to solve a problem using millions of examples.

Nest Cam (battery) in the rain

Is there a difference between creating an algorithm for a security camera versus a “regular” camera?

Yes! A security camera is a different domain. ​​Generally, the pictures you take on your phone are closer and the object of interest is better-focused. For a Nest camera, the environment is harder to control.

Objects may appear blurry due to lighting, weather or camera positioning. People usually aren’t posing or smiling for a security camera, and sometimes only part of an object, like a person’s arm, is in the frame. And Nest Cams analyze video in real time, versus some photos applications, which may have an entire video to analyze from start to finish. 

Cameras also see the world in 2D but they need to understand it in 3D. That’s why a Nest Cam may occasionally mistake a picture on your T-shirt for a real event. Finally, a lot of what a security camera sees is boring because our doorsteps and backyards are mostly quiet, and there are fewer examples of activity. That means you may occasionally get alerts where nothing actually happened. In order for security cameras to become more accurate, we need to have more high quality data to train the ML models on—and that’s one of the biggest challenges.

Nest Cam vs. camera photo of dog

On the left, an image of a dog from a Nest Cam feed on a Nest Hub. On the right, a photo of a dog taken with a Pixel phone.

So basically…it’s harder to detect people with a security camera than with a handheld camera, like a phone? 

In a word…yes. A model used for Google Image Search or Photos won't perform well on Nest Cameras because the images used to train it were probably taken on handheld cameras, and those images are mostly centered and well-lit, unlike the ones a Nest Camera has to analyze

A synthetic room with synthetic cats

Here's an example of a synthesized image, with bounding boxes around synthetic cats

So, we increased the size and diversity of our datasets that were appropriate for security cameras. Then, we added synthesized data — which ranges from creating a fully simulated world to putting synthetic objects on real backgrounds. With full simulation, we were able to create a game-like world where we could manipulate room layout, object placement, lighting conditions, camera placement, and more to account for the many settings our cameras are installed in. Over the course of this project, we created millions of images — including 2.5 million synthetic cats! 

We also use common-sense rules when developing and tuning our algorithms — for example, heads are attached to people!

Our new cameras and doorbells also have hardware that can make the most of the improved software and they do machine learning on-device, rather than in the cloud, for added privacy. They have a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) with 170 times more compute than our older devices—a fancy way of saying that the new devices have more accurate, reliable and timely alerts. 

So, does this mean Nest Cam notifications are accurate 100% of the time? 

No — we use machine learning to ensure Nest Cam notifications are very accurate, but the technology isn’t always perfect. Sometimes a camera could mistake a child crawling around on all fours as an animal, a statue may be confused with a real person, and sometimes the camera will miss things. The new devices have a significantly improved ability to catch previously missed events, but improving our models over time is a forever project.

One thing we’re working on is making sure our camera algorithms take data diversity into account across different genders, ages and skin tones with larger, more diverse training datasets. We’ve also built hardware that can accommodate these datasets, and process frames on-device for added privacy. We treat all of this very seriously across Google ML projects, and Nest is committed to the same.

Experience the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics with Google and YouTube

While some of the Tokyo 2020 Games are over, others are just beginning: The Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games are right around the corner. And just like earlier this summer, there are few ways you can enjoy the action from home. 


1. Watch livestreams and highlights on YouTube
Starting August 24, catch livestreams as well as clips and highlights from 13 official Paralympic broadcasters around the world on their YouTube channels. The Paralympic Games channel will also be streaming over 1,300 hours of live sports across 219 countries and territories, as well as sharing highlights, athlete interviews and behind-the-scenes videos with automatic captions available in 13 languages. Livestreams will also be accessible with automatic captions in English.


2. Stay up to speed with Google Search
Find the latest information on your favorite team and Paralympians, and even see where your country ranks in the race for gold. If you can’t tune into the Paralympics live, don’t worry — you can watch a daily recap video, check out the top news related to the events and with Google Images, even see photo galleries of some of the best photos of the day.  For data lovers, check out our Trends page to see fun Search stats on your favorite sports. And, for a limited time only, keep an eye out for a fun surprise when searching for the Paralympics — I can’t say too much, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun!

Screenshot of the Google Search Result Page for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games

3. Experience Déjà-mew on the Doodle Champion Island Games
Are you (still) feline Lucky? Lucky the Cat is back in our interactive Doodle game! Click on the Doodle to enter the gameworld, join a team and compete against reigning Champions across table tennis, archery, rugby and more. Keep a lookout for competitors and characters with disabilities and without, dozens of surprises and side quests as you journey through Doodle Champion Island, where there are some new levels and extra quests…if you’re up for the challenge.

Image of the Doodle Champion Island Games

4. Stay up to date with the Google Assistant
If you want to learn more about the Paralympics, just say, “Hey Google, give me a Paralympics fact.” Find out which country has the most medals or how your country is doing with "Hey Google, who is leading the Paralympics medal table." You can even ask, “Hey Google, what do you like about the Paralympics?” available in all languages. Whether you’re using your phone, speaker, TV or other enabled device, Google Assistant will have all the important details.


5. Capture the moment with heartwarming Tenor GIFs
The IPC are also working with expression platform Tenor to showcase the very best of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Find incredible moments from the world’s Paralympians on Tenor’s Paralympics channel.


And now, all we have to do is wait for the games to begin.

Responsibility is good for business and for the creator economy


Millions of creators across the globe use YouTube to find a community, reach a global audience and build a business. In order to protect this vibrant community, we’ve developed a responsibility framework that includes: removing violative content, raising authoritative voices and reducing borderline content, and rewarding trusted creators. As we cross the milestone of two million creators in our monetization program, we’re bringing you behind the scenes of our efforts to help an entirely new creative economy thrive. 

Over fourteen years ago, we launched the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), a first-of-its-kind open monetization program, where anyone who qualified could join and start making money. In fact, we share over half of the revenue generated with creators. And today, YPP continues to be one of the largest drivers of the creator economy in the world. Creators who are part of YPP can make money and earn a living from their content on YouTube with ten different monetization features (and we keep adding more), from advertiser revenue to selling merchandise. Over the last three years, we’ve paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies. 

Now, more than two million creators participate in YPP globally, including many who might not otherwise have had a platform, from tech reviewers to entertainers. And many of these creators are generating jobs and contributing to local and global economies. In 2019 alone, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported the equivalent of 345,000 full-time jobs, just in the US. This also means that quality content on everything from how to fix a garage door, to music videos, to lectures on advanced physics, are available for free, to audiences around the world. 

Protecting the creative economy 
This unique business model only works when our viewers, creators and advertisers all have confidence that we are living up to our responsibility as a business. Over the past few years, we’ve been investing in the policies, resources and products needed to protect the community and the vast majority of creators who are producing incredible content, while cracking down on the tiny fraction of bad actors. In fact, in Q4 2020, YouTube’s violative view rate was at 0.16-0.18%, which means that out of every 10,000 views on YouTube, only 16-18 come from violative content. As a result, we’ve seen our focus on responsibility benefit creators and our overall business. In Q2 2021, revenues from YouTube ads crossed $7B and we paid more to YouTube creators and partners than in any quarter in our history. 




In addition to our Community Guidelines, creators need to meet an even higher bar to join the YouTube Partner Program and make money on YouTube. Every channel applying to YPP undergoes review by a trained rater to make sure it meets our policies. We also regularly review and remove channels that don’t comply with our policies. For example, we’ve been removing channels from YPP that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech, harassment and misinformation policies. 

Since advertising has been at the core of creators’ revenue, we need to ensure that advertisers have faith in our systems and feel comfortable with where their ads appear. Advertisers do not want their brands associated with problematic content and actors, and we’ve seen first-hand that they vote with their feet. When advertisers lack trust in our systems, they scale back their spend on YouTube. This affects the entire ecosystem, not just the very small number of bad actors. 

We’ve partnered closely with advertisers to address their feedback, and today we're at least 99% effective at ensuring brand safety for advertisers. As a result, YouTube was the first digital platform to be accredited for content level brand safety by the Media Rating Council. YouTube was also one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a multi-stakeholder initiative to improve digital and brand safety with advertisers. As part of this initiative, we’ve helped establish a set of industry standards to define content not suitable for advertising. 

With improved systems and increased advertiser trust, we’re growing the pie and making channels in YPP more successful as a whole. The number of new channels joining YPP in 2020 more than doubled when compared to the year before. And the number of YouTube channels making 6 figures in revenue or more is up more than 35% year over year in the US. 

Extending our trust in YPP Creators 
Creators in YPP have access to programs and products that give them more control over the monetization of their channel. With our Self-Certification program, they can rate their own videos against our advertiser-friendly guidelines. Our systems verify creators’ ratings, and the more accurate they are, the more our system uses their ratings over time. As a result, creators who accurately rate their content have seen a reduction in classifier mistakes by more than 50%. 

We’ve also rolled out a new “Checks” process which automatically screens creators’ uploads for potential copyright claims and ad suitability restrictions. This helps creators understand how their videos will monetize and make edits before uploading if they want. 

As a result of these efforts, the vast majority of content uploaded by channels in YPP meets the ad-friendly thresholds and is suitable for all advertisers. In fact, just a single digit percent of videos monetized by creators receive a yellow dollar sign icon (meaning they show limited or no ads). This is a win for advertisers and creators alike. 

Helping Creators Expand their Business 
Over the past few years, we’ve been working to build a multi-faceted business that helps YouTube creators grow and diversify their revenue. We now offer ten different ways for creators to earn revenue, such as ads, subscriptions, branded content, merchandising, Paid Digital Goods and more. 

We continue investing in new tools that help creators earn money while strengthening the relationship with their viewers, such as our new Super Thanks tool. And because we’re deeply committed to supporting the next generation of creators, we also offer other ways for creators (both on YPP and outside of YPP) to make money, such as the Shorts Fund.

Finding new ways to reward trusted creators financially and help them ramp up their businesses will always be a top priority for us. 

YouTube is built on the premise of openness, which allows millions of creators to find a voice and a community. However, we set a higher bar for what channels can make money on our platform. We have every incentive to continue to tackle problematic content on our platform: it is not just the right thing for our viewers and creators, it’s also good for business. We’ll continue our responsibility work even as we continue to grow the YouTube Partner Program, and we consider these investments core to the future success of the creator economy at large.

Responsibility is good for business and for the creator economy


Millions of creators across the globe use YouTube to find a community, reach a global audience and build a business. In order to protect this vibrant community, we’ve developed a responsibility framework that includes: removing violative content, raising authoritative voices and reducing borderline content, and rewarding trusted creators. As we cross the milestone of two million creators in our monetization program, we’re bringing you behind the scenes of our efforts to help an entirely new creative economy thrive. 

Over fourteen years ago, we launched the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), a first-of-its-kind open monetization program, where anyone who qualified could join and start making money. In fact, we share over half of the revenue generated with creators. And today, YPP continues to be one of the largest drivers of the creator economy in the world. Creators who are part of YPP can make money and earn a living from their content on YouTube with ten different monetization features (and we keep adding more), from advertiser revenue to selling merchandise. Over the last three years, we’ve paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies. 

Now, more than two million creators participate in YPP globally, including many who might not otherwise have had a platform, from tech reviewers to entertainers. And many of these creators are generating jobs and contributing to local and global economies. In 2019 alone, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported the equivalent of 345,000 full-time jobs, just in the US. This also means that quality content on everything from how to fix a garage door, to music videos, to lectures on advanced physics, are available for free, to audiences around the world. 

Protecting the creative economy 
This unique business model only works when our viewers, creators and advertisers all have confidence that we are living up to our responsibility as a business. Over the past few years, we’ve been investing in the policies, resources and products needed to protect the community and the vast majority of creators who are producing incredible content, while cracking down on the tiny fraction of bad actors. In fact, in Q4 2020, YouTube’s violative view rate was at 0.16-0.18%, which means that out of every 10,000 views on YouTube, only 16-18 come from violative content. As a result, we’ve seen our focus on responsibility benefit creators and our overall business. In Q2 2021, revenues from YouTube ads crossed $7B and we paid more to YouTube creators and partners than in any quarter in our history. 




In addition to our Community Guidelines, creators need to meet an even higher bar to join the YouTube Partner Program and make money on YouTube. Every channel applying to YPP undergoes review by a trained rater to make sure it meets our policies. We also regularly review and remove channels that don’t comply with our policies. For example, we’ve been removing channels from YPP that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech, harassment and misinformation policies. 

Since advertising has been at the core of creators’ revenue, we need to ensure that advertisers have faith in our systems and feel comfortable with where their ads appear. Advertisers do not want their brands associated with problematic content and actors, and we’ve seen first-hand that they vote with their feet. When advertisers lack trust in our systems, they scale back their spend on YouTube. This affects the entire ecosystem, not just the very small number of bad actors. 

We’ve partnered closely with advertisers to address their feedback, and today we're at least 99% effective at ensuring brand safety for advertisers. As a result, YouTube was the first digital platform to be accredited for content level brand safety by the Media Rating Council. YouTube was also one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a multi-stakeholder initiative to improve digital and brand safety with advertisers. As part of this initiative, we’ve helped establish a set of industry standards to define content not suitable for advertising. 

With improved systems and increased advertiser trust, we’re growing the pie and making channels in YPP more successful as a whole. The number of new channels joining YPP in 2020 more than doubled when compared to the year before. And the number of YouTube channels making 6 figures in revenue or more is up more than 35% year over year in the US. 

Extending our trust in YPP Creators 
Creators in YPP have access to programs and products that give them more control over the monetization of their channel. With our Self-Certification program, they can rate their own videos against our advertiser-friendly guidelines. Our systems verify creators’ ratings, and the more accurate they are, the more our system uses their ratings over time. As a result, creators who accurately rate their content have seen a reduction in classifier mistakes by more than 50%. 

We’ve also rolled out a new “Checks” process which automatically screens creators’ uploads for potential copyright claims and ad suitability restrictions. This helps creators understand how their videos will monetize and make edits before uploading if they want. 

As a result of these efforts, the vast majority of content uploaded by channels in YPP meets the ad-friendly thresholds and is suitable for all advertisers. In fact, just a single digit percent of videos monetized by creators receive a yellow dollar sign icon (meaning they show limited or no ads). This is a win for advertisers and creators alike. 

Helping Creators Expand their Business 
Over the past few years, we’ve been working to build a multi-faceted business that helps YouTube creators grow and diversify their revenue. We now offer ten different ways for creators to earn revenue, such as ads, subscriptions, branded content, merchandising, Paid Digital Goods and more. 

We continue investing in new tools that help creators earn money while strengthening the relationship with their viewers, such as our new Super Thanks tool. And because we’re deeply committed to supporting the next generation of creators, we also offer other ways for creators (both on YPP and outside of YPP) to make money, such as the Shorts Fund.

Finding new ways to reward trusted creators financially and help them ramp up their businesses will always be a top priority for us. 

YouTube is built on the premise of openness, which allows millions of creators to find a voice and a community. However, we set a higher bar for what channels can make money on our platform. We have every incentive to continue to tackle problematic content on our platform: it is not just the right thing for our viewers and creators, it’s also good for business. We’ll continue our responsibility work even as we continue to grow the YouTube Partner Program, and we consider these investments core to the future success of the creator economy at large.

Helping users prevent echo in Google Meet

 

Quick launch summary 
We’re making it easier to identify and fix when an echo is happening in Google Meet video calls. ‘Echo’ can happen when your system feeds back audio into a call. Most of the time, Meet will intelligently control the audio to remove the echo. However, sometimes it still happens, and causes others to hear an echo from your device when they speak. Until now, it has been difficult for you to know when your device is causing an echo. Now, we will notify you when we detect a notable echo from your system which may be heard by other call participants with a red dot on the more options button, along with a text notification. Clicking on the notification will go to our Help Center, where you can find recommended steps which can help prevent echo. 


Users may see a notification alerting them when they’re causing an echo
Users may see a notification alerting them when they’re causing an echo 




If you click on the notification, there’s troubleshooting steps you can take which might help reduce the echo

If you click on the notification, there’s troubleshooting steps you can take which might help reduce the echo 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 
Availability 
  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 
Resources

Growing our network in the Charlotte area

Next up in our city update series, we travel to Charlotte and see what’s happening with our Queen City team. 




Hello! It’s been a while since we’ve checked in from Charlotte, but we’ve been on the move across the metro area. In addition to offering our high-speed internet service in North & South Charlotte, and apartments and condos in Uptown, we’ve recently started serving Hidden Valley and we’re continuing to expand our network in various parts of the city.

We’ve also recently started expanding our network to some Charlotte adjacent communities. We’re excited that Concord announced last week that Google Fiber is coming soon, and construction efforts are also already underway in Matthews. We hope to serve our first customers in both these cities by the end of the year.

Helping our community connect

In Charlotte, we’ve always worked closely with our libraries to help more people get online. This year, we’ve taken that show on the road, collaborating with Project OutPour and Hope Vibes to equip their mobile hygiene units with Wi-Fi, through the coordination of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation. The project will be launching its second location soon, allowing our local homeless population to do laundry, shower, and get online in one place. 

This year, we also joined select members of Tech Rising to launch the Tech Idea Incubator Fund, a micro-grants program intended to seed innovative ideas from nonprofit organizations that are committed to eliminating the digital divide and fostering digital inclusion and equity.

Google Fiber is proud to invest in Digital Charlotte’s Digital Navigator Program, dedicated to ensuring that everyone in Mecklenburg County can find and connect with digital inclusion resources. 

What’s next?

As you can see, we’ve got a lot going on in the Charlotte metro area. We are continuing to grow the Google Fiber team across all of our teams and cities. If you are interested in potentially joining our team, check out our job listings at fiber.google.com/careers.

Posted by Spencer Walston, Head of Sales; Jason Smith, Tech Lead; & Jess George, Government & Community Affairs Manager.



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author: Spencer Walston, Jason Smith, & Jess George

category: city_news

Making Ratings and Reviews better for users and developers

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Scott Lin, and Tat Yang Koh, Product Managers at Google Play


Illustration of person holding phone looking at 4 star rating

Ratings and reviews are important. They provide valuable quantitative and qualitative feedback on your users’ reported experience of your app or game, and the broader service that you offer. That’s why they’re one of the signals people use when deciding what to download on Google Play.

We’ve heard from both Play Store users and developers that ratings and reviews could be more helpful. This is especially true when ratings from one area unfairly impact another — like when a bug that only impacted a single country negatively affects the app’s rating everywhere; or when positive improvements in a tablet experience are overlooked because of the number of users on phones. So we’re starting a multi-quarter program of improvements to make ratings more personalized and indicative of the experience each individual user can expect, and to make them easier to navigate and use for developers:

  • From November 2021, users on phones will start to see ratings specific to their registered country
  • Early in 2022 users on other form-factors such as tablets, Chromebooks, and wearables will start to see ratings specific to the device that they’re on

We understand that many developers closely monitor the ratings that their potential users see, so we’re making sure you have plenty of notice about these upcoming changes. We’ve also made enhancements to Play Console to help you understand your ratings and reviews - especially across form-factors.

Changes to Google Play Console

Device type insights

Expanding your support for different device types is one of the most important and impactful changes you can make to your user interfaces. Adding tablet-optimized layouts or better mouse and keyboard support for Chrome OS can result in a step-change in the quality of your users’ experience, which in turn influences their ratings and reviews.

New Device type ratings insights are available in Play Console ratings overview and breakdown pages

New Device type ratings insights are available in Play Console ratings overview and breakdown pages

To make it easier to spot opportunities across various device types and track the impact of enhanced experiences, we’ve added new Device Type dimensions to the ratings page. We’ve also added a Device Type filter to your reviews so you can easily see how your tablet users are rating you, or what your users on Chrome OS say in their reviews.

More flexible date and period selections

Many of you have told us that you want to access more granular data than our selectors allowed. So, we’ve broken down your segmentation options and made them easier to use. You can now independently select the time period you want to plot (from the last 28 days through to your app’s complete lifetime), and how you want your ratings data to be aggregated (daily, weekly, or every 28 days). This allows you to access more granular data over longer periods of time.

Select any time range and aggregation period independently to find the ratings data you want

Select any time range and aggregation period independently to find the ratings data you want

Download data easily

We’ve also enabled CSV downloads of your average data and rating distributions. Combined with the new data selection options, you can easily query and download much more of your data and perform offline analysis. For example, you could download your entire history of daily ratings distributions and correlate it in a spreadsheet with customer service contacts.

Access and download all your data including ratings breakdowns directly from the overview page

Access and download all your data including ratings breakdowns directly from the overview page

All of these changes are live in Play Console now. Visit Ratings analysis and Reviews to try them out.*

Upcoming changes to ratings in Google Play

Ratings help people decide which apps to download and they are taken into consideration for featuring and placement on Play Store. But because the app experience can vary depending on the user’s region and device type, aggregate ratings don’t always tell the whole story. That’s why, starting in November 2021, we’re going to change the ratings that individual users see based on where they’re registered, and later in the year what device they’re using.

From November, this means that users on phones will see specific ratings for the country or region they’re based in. So a user in Japan will see app ratings generated from those submitted by other Japanese users.

Early next year we’ll further update ratings to reflect the device type users are browsing Play on, whether it’s: tablets and foldables, Chrome OS, Wear, or Auto. This will give users a better impression of the experience that they can expect for the device they’re using. We recommend you take a look at your form-factor ratings today - especially for tablets where growth is very strong - to see if you should invest in optimising your users’ experiences.

We understand that as a developer you will want to make sure you understand and get ahead of any major shifts in your user-visible ratings. So at least 10 weeks before any change in Play Store, we’ll automatically analyze the change your app can expect to see and reach out to any developer that will see a change of more that 0.2 stars on any device type in a key market (one with >5% of your store listing visitors). This will give you time to plan if you want to make key changes to your app.

These changes in Google Play will start to roll out from November with country or region-specific ratings. Look out for messages about your ratings in your Play Console Inbox towards the end of this year, and don’t forget that you can get ahead by checking your ratings by country and device-type today.

*Please note you need a Play Console account to access these links.

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Google Developer Group Spotlight: A conversation with GDG Juba Lead, Kose

Posted by Aniedi Udo-Obong, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Lead, Google Developer Groups

Header image featuring Kose with text that says meet Kose

The Google Developer Groups Spotlight series interviews inspiring leaders of community meetup groups around the world. Our goal is to learn more about what developers are working on, how they’ve grown their skills with the Google Developer Group community, and what tips they might have for us all.

We recently spoke with Kose, community lead for Google Developer Groups Juba in South Sudan. Check out our conversation with Kose about building a GDG chapter, the future of GDG Juba, and the importance of growing the tech community in South Sudan.

Tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a village-grown software developer and community lead of GDG Juba. I work with JavaScript stack with a focus on the backend. Learning through the community has always been part of me before joining GDG Juba. I love tech volunteerism and building a community around me and beyond. I attended many local developer meetups and learned a lot that led to my involvement with GDG Juba.

I am currently helping grow the GDG Juba community in South Sudan, and previously volunteered as a mentor in the Google Africa Developer Scholarship 2020.

Why did you want to get involved in tech?

I hail from a remote South Sudan's village with little to zero access to technology. My interest in tech has largely been driven due to an enthusiasm to build things and solve farming, agricultural economics, and social issues using technology.

I am currently researching and working on a farmers connection network to help transform our agricultural economics.

What is unique about pursuing a career as a developer in South Sudan?

When you talk about technology in South Sudan, we are relatively behind compared to our neighbors and beyond. Some challenges include the lack of support, resources, and mentorship among the few technology aspirants. The electricity and internet bills are so costly that an undetermined hustler won't sacrifice their days' hustle for exploring and learning the tech spectrum.

At the same time, there are a lot of areas technology developers can dive into. Finance, hospitality, agriculture, transportation, and content creation are all viable fields. As a determined techie, I tasked myself with allocating 10% of everything I do and earn to learning and exploring technology. This helped me to have some time, money, and resources for my tech journey. As for mentorship, I’m building a global network of resourceful folks to help me venture into new areas of the tech sector.

How did you become a GDG lead?

I’ve always been that person who joined tech events as often as I could find registration links. In my college days, I would skip classes to attend events located hours away. I would hardly miss Python Hyderabad, pycons, and many other Android meetups. It was during the International Women's Day (IWD) 2018 event organized by WTM Hyderabad and GDG Hyderabad that I was lucky enough to give a short challenge pitch talk. I saw how the conference folks were excited and amazed given the fact that I was the only African in the huge Tech Mahindra conference hall. I met a lot of people, organizers, business personalities and students.

Kose shakes hand with woman at stage

Kose takes the stage for International Women's Day (IWD) 2018

At the end of the conference and subsequent events, I convinced myself to start a similar community. Since starting out with a WhatsApp group chat, we’ve grown to about 200 members on our GDG event platform, and have event partners like Koneta Hub and others. Since then, GDG Juba is helping grow the tech community around Juba, South Sudan.

How has the GDG community helped you grow in the tech industry?

From design thinking to public speaking and structuring technical meetups, the GDG community has become a resourceful part of organizing GDG Juba meetups and enhancing my organizational skills.

As a community lead, I continuously plan the organization of more impactful events and conferences, and network with potential event partners, speakers, mentors, and organizers. Being part of the GDG community has helped me get opportunities to share knowledge with others. In one instance, I became a mobile web mentor and judge for the Google Africa Developer Scholarship 2020 program.

What has been the most inspiring part of being a part of your local Google Developer Group?

As a tech aspirant, I had always wanted to be part of a tech community to learn, network, and grow in the community. Unfortunately, back then there wasn't a single tech user group in my locality. The most inspiring thing about being part of this chapter is the network buildup and learning from the community. I notably network with people I could have never networked with on a typical day.

Kose standing with 10 members at GDG Juba meetup

Kose at a GDG Juba meetup

A lot of our meetup attendees now share their knowledge and experiences with others to inspire many. We are seeing a community getting more engagement in technology. Students tell us they are learning things they hardly get in their college curriculum.

As a learner myself, I am very excited to see folks learn new tech skills and am also happy to see women participating in the tech events. I’m especially proud of the fact that we organized International Women's Day (IWD) 2021, making it possible for us to be featured in a famous local newspaper outlet.

What are some technical resources you have found the most helpful for your professional development?

The official documentation from Google Developers for Android, Firebase, and others have been and are still helpful for my understanding and diving into details of the new things I learn.

In addition to the cool resources from the awesome tech bloggers on the internet, these links are helping me a lot in my adventure:

  1. Google Developers Medium articles
  2. Android Developers Training courses
  3. Udacity Android/ Firebase courses
  4. GitHub code review
  5. Google Developers India YouTube channel

What is coming up for GDG Juba that you are most excited about?

As part of our Android Study Jam conducted earlier this year, we are planning to host a mentorship program for Android application development. The program will run from scratch to building a fully-fledged, deployable Android app that the community can use for daily activities. I am particularly excited about the fact that we will be having a mentor who has been in the industry for quite a long time. I hope to see people who read this article participating in the mentorship program, too!

What would be one piece of advice you have for someone looking to learn more about a specific technology?

Be a learner. Join groups that can mentor your learning journey.

Ready to learn new skills with developers like Kose? Find a Google Developer Group near you, here.