How leading Google One is like solving a puzzle

When office life became video call life in 2020, people around the world experienced the drain of remote meetings. Larissa Fontaine might be the one exception. “Video calls can be hard because you’re just moving from one thing to the next...but I also get a lot of energy from them,” she says with a smile. “I realized I actually like jumping from topic to topic.” Holding up her notebook, she admits one caveat: “But I have to write things down! Otherwise I won’t retain it all.” 

By “it all,” Larissa means the many product teams she meets with every day. Larissa is the vice president of Google One, a subscription service that includes cloud storage and extra benefits to give users peace of mind, such as automatic phone backup, enhanced security features, family sharing…the list goes on. This role requires her to act as something of a puzzle master, making sure everything works together just right, so that different departments, partners and ultimately — most importantly — customers get what they need. Luckily, she’s up to the task. “I enjoy problem-solving,” she says. “I find it really invigorating.”


How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

I say I work on Google One, which is a subscription that gives you more storage and premium features across different Google products — basically, a membership to help you get more out of Google. I work with Googlers across different areas like engineering, marketing and design to figure out how to make Google One even more valuable for our members. 


What are the most challenging and most rewarding parts of your job?

They’re the same thing: partnering with so many different teams and products across the entire company. It can be complicated trying to solve for the needs of that many product areas. At the same time, when teams come together and find a great solution, it’s exciting. I am always impressed with the creativity and collaboration required to make amazing experiences for users that also work really well for different products and our partners.


Did you always want to work in tech?

I took a mechanical engineering class in college, and it was sort of like “MacGyver,” where you have things like foam core and string and tape and you have to figure out how to precisely move an object across the room without picking it up. I loved figuring out ways to solve these crazy problems, I loved being part of a team, and I loved being super hands-on building things. I ended up majoring in mechanical engineering and then also getting my master’s degree in mechanical engineering. 

I want to hear how you’re doing, what’s going on in the rest of your life — and then we can get into the potentially harder, thornier stuff we need to talk about.

How have you seen the subscription model take over tech?

The open, free internet is still incredibly important, and ad-supported models provide significant value to users. There are also cases where ad-supported solutions may not be the right fit. Subscriptions are growing across industries, not just tech. Car companies are building subscriptions, kids’ clothing companies — there are many examples. And it’s because people rightfully expect ongoing value for the things they buy. Buying something that’s one-and-done, that doesn’t consistently get better, isn’t as appealing. Tech lends itself particularly well to this idea, because we can provide more innovation and continuous improvements over time. 


What’s a habit or routine that helps you in your job?  

I have a habit of spending the first few minutes of every meeting just connecting with my coworkers, especially in video calls. Having an awareness of other people's overall wellbeing is personally important to me, and I also think it helps us work better together. I want to hear how you’re doing, what’s going on in the rest of your life — and then we can get into the potentially harder, thornier stuff we need to talk about. It makes my work a lot more enjoyable and I think it makes the people I work with feel the same — at least I hope so! 

We created these values for our team a couple of years ago, and one of them is “woohoo often.” It sounds silly, but we do a group “woohoo!” out loud when we have a win or hit a milestone, personal or work-related. We kept it going throughout working from home, and it felt a little strange at first to cheer “woohoo!” over a video call, but it’s actually been great. 


What’s something about you that would surprise people? 

I did gymnastics growing up and was on the national team for about nine years and I competed on two world championship teams. I have a move named after me, the Fontaine. It was considered difficult at the time, but you’ll see far more impressive skills from Simone Biles in Tokyo!

Cultural Pit-Stops: making hours of boring travel time fly by

Ever noticed how summer holidays never seem to come quickly enough? We plan our journey ahead with chills of excitement, eagerly choosing which swimsuits will make it into our suitcase or dreaming of days blurring into long naps and lemonade-sipping, counting down the moments until we can finally hit the road. But then the long-awaited day arrives and time shifts as hours seem to stretch long while we wait to board a plane, travel hundreds of kilometers or miles by car (sometimes with kids or pets) or embark on multiple train rides. How can we make it go faster?

Google Arts & Culture and its partners have got you covered with Cultural Pit-Stops: a series of fun and educative activities you can do alone or with a group to help speed up time while you travel.

A collage of a man standing next to a map of Spain

1. If you’re watching the clock tick before hopping on your next train/plane/bus...

Enjoy a series of videos and experiences like Spin the Globe for your first stop, continue your journey across the world with celebrities, or just relax and stop frantically checking the departure board at the station or airport. And if you’re stuck in a car, we have something for you whether you are sitting in the driver’s orpassenger’sseat.

4 colorful blobs singing in front of a red curtain

2. If your kids start to act up in the back of the car:

Traveling with children can literally be a headache but virtual baby-sitters like the Blobs or Hopper the Penguin may just save your journey by helping you keep your littles ones busy and focused as you create a song or explore a museum together.

An Image of the Angkor Wat with a groups of monks wearing orange tunics

3. If conversation is running dry with your fellow travel companions:

Why not test your knowledge of cinema pioneers  or famous monuments? You may well become your group’s next culture champion and, if not, you can always put your headphones on and learn more about Frida’s Self Portrait or Gauguin’s Vahine. Tip: this also works for endless walks with your in-laws or that old uncle you haven’t seen in years.

If this intense cultural journey has left you exhausted, you can always squeeze in one last selfie — but make it artsy. 

And just like that, you’ve arrived at your destination. Happy holidays. 

Explore more by downloading the free Google Arts & Culture app, or visit the Google Arts & Culture website.

Related Article

Put a cultural spin on game night

A new collection of entertaining games to connect with art in your daily life launches on Google Arts & Culture.

Read Article

Sharing More Olympic Moments with CBC Sports on YouTube

Editors Note: This blog was guest written by Perdita Felicien, an author, two-time Olympian, ten-time National Champion and the first Canadian woman to win a World Championship gold medal in track and field. Felicien is host of Tokyo Today and proud member of CBC's Tokyo 2020 broadcast team.
 

This summer in Tokyo, thousands of athletes from around the world will come together and compete on the world’s biggest sporting stage. Some athletes will compete for the first time, others for the last, all will have their eyes on the podium, ready to cement their name in history. Each will carry with them their own journey to the Olympic Games and have their own story to tell of how it all unfolded. 

The Olympic Games is a larger than life event, broadcasted to every corner of the world. The events however, are only the tip of the iceberg - a culmination of years of hard work. What most don’t see are the winding roads and the uphill climb that brought the athletes to the start line. I know first hand that qualifying for the Olympics is no easy feat. Access to training facilities, finding the right coaches and mentors, gaining financial support and weathering injuries are just a few of the obstacles athletes must first overcome. That’s why the Olympic Games are more than just a sporting event, it’s a celebration of years of training, hard work, and sacrifice. 

Olympians play a powerful role in bringing communities together. We inspire others with our skill, grit and determination and every two years, the world has the pleasure of watching us compete for glory at the Olympic Games. As a proud member of CBC’s Olympic broadcast team, we believe it is important to go beyond event coverage and share more moments leading up to and during the Olympic Games that help to create a closer connection between audiences and athletes. 

This summer, CBC is making the Olympic Games more accessible to Canadians by offering more ways to watch, and more Olympic-themed content to enjoy. Through CBC Sports on YouTube, audiences can get a deeper look at the Olympic journey with athlete interviews, full event recaps, viral moments and more behind the scenes content. CBC’s goal is to give audiences more access to Tokyo 2020 and showcase the athletes and the moments that will surely become part of Olympic history.

Select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection

Quick launch summary

Now you can select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection (such as moving the tabs together, deleting, duplicating, copying, coloring, or hiding). Work in Google Sheets with confidence and make workflows faster as you perform basic actions on more than one sheet at a time.


GIF show how multiple tabs are selected in Sheets to be deleted together.



Getting started


Rollout pace


Availability

  • Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Frontline, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Nonprofits, Cloud Identity Free, Cloud Identity Premium 

Resources

Block shares from another user in Google Drive

What’s changing 

As we recently announced on the Cloud Blog, we’re adding the ability to block another user in Google Drive. If blocked, the user will not be able to share any Drive items with you, and items owned by the user will not be able to be shared with you or be shown when you’re browsing Google Drive. In addition, your files will not be available to the user you’ve blocked, even if you’ve previously shared items with them. 


Note that you can’t block users within your domain, and blocking a user on Drive will also block them from interacting with you on other apps and services. 


Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why you’d use it 

Google Drive enables both individuals and organizations to store, share, and collaborate from anywhere. Drive’s sharing capabilities fuel productivity and collaboration, but bad actors can abuse tools that are meant to facilitate helpful sharing. That's why we are creating a way to block other users. By using this feature, you can: 
Block another user from sharing any content with you in the future. This can be a useful control if, for example, another user has a history of sending spam or abusive content. 
Remove all existing files and folders shared by another user. This is an easy way to get rid of all spam or abusive content shared from a specific user at one time. 
Remove another person’s access to your content, even if you’ve previously shared it with them. 


User blocking will not only preserve Drive sharing’s helpfulness, but most importantly preserve the safety of Drive users. 


Getting started 

Block another user in Google Drive
Blocking an individual from future sharing in Google Drive 

Block another user from the shared with me screen in Google Drive


Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers. Also available to users with personal Google Accounts. 

Resources 

Bulk convert Classic Sites to new Sites using the Classic Sites Manager

Quick summary 

In 2017, we announced that we would replace classic Sites with new Sites, and in 2019 we announced that domains will have until the end of 2021 to complete the transition. 


To help manage the transition, Admins and end users can use the Classic Sites Manager to: 

Beginning today, you can now bulk convert Classic Sites to new Sites using the Classic Sites Manager. We hope this highly-requested feature will make it easier to prepare your organization for the migration completion. 

Using the classic sites manager, you can bulk convert classic sites to new sites.


Additional details

The user who initiates the bulk conversion will become the owner of all converted sites—they can reassign site ownership using the Classic Sites Manager once the conversion is complete.


If sites cannot be converted, they will be skipped and the converter will be notified via email.

Getting started 


Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Frontline customers 

Resources 

2021 Scholar Metrics Released


Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2021 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published in 2016–2020 and includes citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of July 2020.

Scholar Metrics include journals from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines and selected conferences in Engineering & Computer Science. Publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2016-2020, or publications that received no citations over these years are not included.

You can browse publications in specific categories such as Computational Linguistics, Hematology, or Religion as well as broad areas like Engineering & Computer Science or Humanities, Literature & Arts . You will see the top 20 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You also can browse the top 100 publications in several languages - for example, Portuguese and Spanish. For each publication, you can view the top papers by clicking on the h5-index.

Scholar Metrics include a large number of publications beyond those listed on the per-category and per-language pages. You can find these by typing words from the title in the search box, e.g., [informatics], [special education], [salud].

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya

Updates to how Google Ads API Smart Bidding strategies are organized

We previously announced changes to how Smart Bidding strategies are organized to help advertisers choose the right one. Google Ads API developers can now create new or update existing Search campaigns using the following bidding strategies: What’s changing
Starting on September 30, 2021, Google Ads API developers won’t be able to create new TargetCpa or TargetRoas standard bidding strategies in Search campaigns. This change will prevent creating new Search campaigns that use these strategies, as well as prevent updating existing Search campaigns to use these strategies. Instead, use the new optional target CPA field with MaximizeConversions, and the new target ROAS field with MaximizeConversionValue. This change will not affect portfolio (shared) bidding strategies.

AdWords API
AdWords API users can continue to use the old style TargetRoasBiddingScheme and TargetCpaBiddingScheme bidding strategies, since v201809 of that API does not contain the MaximizeConversions.target_cpa field required to migrate to the new style bidding strategies. Their usage will sunset when the AdWords API itself sunsets in April, 2022. Switch to using the new bidding strategies when you migrate your code to the Google Ads API.

What to do
Update any code that creates or updates standard (non-portfolio) TargetCpa or TargetRoas Search campaigns. Use MaximizeConversions or MaximizeConversionValue strategies with their target_cpa (mutable starting in v8) or target_roas fields instead.

There will be no impact to bidding behavior due to this update. Using MaximizeConversions with target_cpa will have the same bidding behavior as TargetCpa. Likewise, using MaximizeConversionValue with target_roas will have the same bidding behavior as TargetRoas.

Refer to our product level announcement for more details on this change.

All existing campaigns using TargetCpa or TargetRoas will continue to run as usual, and you will still be able to manage their bidding strategies and budgets as before. We’ll give advance notice before automatically migrating these old bidding strategies to the new format in 2022.

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

Announcing our second Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders cohort

Posted by Jason Scott, Head of Startup Developer Ecosystem, USA

Head shots of 2 people. One male and one female

Last year, 12 inspiring entrepreneurs kicked off the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders. Throughout the three month program, founders met weekly to work on growing their startups and solving tough technical challenges. “There’s so much happening every single day as a startup,” says Ashley Edwards, founder of MindRight Health, whose startup is making mental healthcare accessible to people of color and low-income families. “The program helped us navigate everything from protecting our team from distractions to building out our machine learning and data science models.”

This August, we’ll launch the second Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders with 11 more incredible Black-led startups from across North America. This class features startups using technology to solve challenges in medicine, education, water sustainability, real estate, and more:

GIF of Black Founders class

Acclinate (Birmingham, Alabama, USA): A digital health startup using culture and tech to source diverse participants for clinical trials.

Adapdix (Pleasanton, California, USA): An AI/ML startup that works with large industrial semiconductor, electronic and assembly companies.

AllHere Education (Boston, Massachusetts, USA): Fosters student attendance and supports families and students with mobile messaging powered by AI.

Chatdesk (New York, New York, USA): Uses machine learning to scale support teams with the click of a button.

DOSS (Houston, Texas, USA): A digital, voice-activated real estate marketplace that empowers consumers to speak, text or type questions about properties nationwide and receive accurate, easy answers instantly.

Fêtefully (Dallas, Texas, USA): Digitizes wedding planning experiences, allowing planners to generate greater revenue and improve their offerings to customers.

Mommy Monitor (Toronto Ontario, Canada): A maternal care services platform that provides an easily accessible and culturally safe range of services that gives parents extra support customized to their particular needs and wants.

Optimal Technical Corporation (Atlanta, Georgia, USA): Intelligently eliminates electricity waste, lowers operational expenses, and helps to save the planet.

Sugar (Los Angeles, California, USA): Provides software to building owners and managers to transform the residential experience.

Varuna (Chicago, Illinois, USA): The leading water distribution system monitoring company providing real-time visibility, awareness and insights to water systems enabling optimal operations and consumer safety.

Zirtue (Dallas, Texas, USA): The world's first relationship-based lending application that simplifies loans between friends, family and trusted relationships while giving borrowers the option to pay creditors directly using their borrowed funds.

We are incredibly excited to support this group of founders over the next three months and beyond, connecting them with the best of our people, products, and programming to advance their companies and solutions.

Be sure to join us as we showcase their accomplishments on Thursday, October 21 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm EST at our Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders Demo Day 2021.

Learn more – and get more – from Search

When you search for information on Google, you’re probably accustomed to seeing a lot of relevant results in a fraction of a second. But maybe you’ve found yourself wondering how Google connected those results to the words you typed, especially if you didn’t get exactly what you were expecting to find. 


Now, there’s a quick and easy way to see useful context about how Google returned results for your query, and to find helpful tips to get more out of Google Search. Starting today, when you visit an About This Result panel — the three dots next to most results — you’ll get even more information about your results to help you make sense of the information and figure out which result will be most useful.

Screenshot of a Google search bar with the query “how to cook fish in the oven.” Below, a screenshot of an About This Result panel for a result for this query, including information about the source as well as factors (like search terms, language, and location) that connected the result to the search.

Relevant, useful results

With the vast amount of information available on the web, it would be nearly impossible to find what you need without some help sorting through it. Google’s Search systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of webpages to find the most relevant and reliable results, and present them in a helpful way. 


The way Google determines what is relevant and reliable information for a given query is based on a lot of different factors. While it can seem complex, some of these fundamental concepts are actually quite simple, and can be useful for people to understand when they start searching.


Starting today, About This Result will show searchers information about some of these most important factors used by Google Search to connect results to their queries. Because just as these factors help Google decide if a result may be relevant, they may also help people decide what result is useful for them.

Screenshot of a Google search bar with the query “get the shot.” Below, a screenshot of an About This Result panel for a result for this query, including information about the source as well as factors (like search terms, language, and location) that connected the result to the search.

We already give some visual indications of some of these relevance factors on the results page, but we’re now bringing this context to the About This Result panel, so people can easily evaluate whether a result might be the one they’re looking for. Here are some of the factors that you’ll see:

  • Matching keywords: A simple, but important, factor Google uses to determine if information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as your search. 
  • Related terms: Google also looks for terms that our systems determined are related to the words in your query. If you search “how to cook fish in the oven,” we’ll also look for pages that have related terms like “bake” and “recipe.” 
  • Looking at links: When other pages link to a page using similar words as your query, that page might be relevant to your search. It can also be a helpful indicator of whether online content creators tend to regard the page as useful for that topic.
  • Local relevance: Our systems also look at factors like the language you’re using to search as well as your country and location, to deliver content relevant for your area. For example, if you search "what day is trash pickup?,” it’s helpful to get results that are applicable to your city or state.

Get the most out of your search

Sometimes, the results you see in Search might not be quite what you’re looking for. 


Now, the About This Result panel will also spotlight useful search tips to help Google better understand what you’re trying to find. The panel will show you search techniques or settings you can use to modify your search to get the results you’re after. 


For example, if you usually search in English, but want to find results in a different language, or from a different region, About This Result makes it even easier to adjust your settings. 


You may even want to adjust your search. Imagine you search for “best jogging shoes.” While it’s usually helpful for Google to return results about related concepts, in this case “running shoes,” you’re really after shoes that are optimized for jogging.

A phone screen shows the About This Result panel for the query "Best Jogging Shoes." The image scrolls over the panel, and shows a search tip that pops up suggesting a modification to the search to get different results.

About This Result will show you tips for how you can get to what you really wanted. For example, you can put quotes around a word or phrase to get results that mention those words exactly, or use a minus sign to exclude certain words from your search. 


This new tool is another helpful way to get more context about the results you’re seeing on Search. From being able to quickly check information about a source via About This Result to getting helpful notices if we feel results aren’t particularly relevant or if they’re rapidly changing, this set of features aims to help you find what you’re looking for and also be equipped to better evaluate the information that you find. This expansion of About This Result is rolling out in English in the U.S. to start, and we look forward to bringing this and other related features to more people in the coming months.

Source: Search