Summary: Next 2019 announcements

Google Cloud Next 2019 is happening now in San Francisco. To learn more about the event and tune into sessions, click here.

For a summary of the announcements from the event, see our Cloud blog posts about how we’re helping businesses work faster, smarter and more collaboratively in G Suite, and increasing trust in Google Cloud with visibility, control and automation.

For details of the announcements, see the posts on this blog:

Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for more announcements throughout the event.

Summary: Next 2019 announcements

Google Cloud Next 2019 is happening now in San Francisco. To learn more about the event and tune into sessions, click here.

For a summary of the announcements from the event, see our Cloud blog posts about how we’re helping businesses work faster, smarter and more collaboratively in G Suite, and increasing trust in Google Cloud with visibility, control and automation.

For details of the announcements, see the posts on this blog:

Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for more announcements throughout the event.

Updates from Coral: A new compiler and much more

Posted by Vikram Tank (Product Manager), Coral Team

Coral has been public for about a month now, and we’ve heard some great feedback about our products. As we evolve the Coral platform, we’re making our products easier to use and exposing more powerful tools for building devices with on-device AI.

Today, we're updating the Edge TPU model compiler to remove the restrictions around specific architectures, allowing you to submit any model architecture that you want. This greatly increases the variety of models that you can run on the Coral platform. Just be sure to review the TensorFlow ops supported on Edge TPU and model design requirements to take full advantage of the Edge TPU at runtime.

We're also releasing a new version of Mendel OS (3.0 Chef) for the Dev Board with a new board management tool called Mendel Development Tool (MDT).

To help with the developer workflow, our new C++ API works with the TensorFlow Lite C++ API so you can execute inferences on an Edge TPU. In addition, both the Python and C++ APIs now allow you to run multiple models in parallel, using multiple Edge TPU devices.

In addition to these updates, we’re adding new capabilities to Coral with the release of the Environmental Sensor Board. It’s an accessory board for the Coral Dev Platform (and Raspberry Pi) that brings sensor input to your models. It has integrated light, temperature, humidity, and barometric sensors, and the ability to add more sensors via it's four Grove connectors. The secure element on-board also allows for easy communication with the Google Cloud IOT Core.

The team has also been working with partners to help them evaluate whether Coral is the right fit for their products. We’re excited that Oivi has chosen us to be the base platform of their new handheld AI-camera. This product will help prevent blindness among diabetes patients by providing early, automated detection of diabetic retinopathy. Anders Eikenes, CEO of Oivi, says “Oivi is dedicated towards providing patient-centric eye care for everyone - including emerging markets. We were honoured to be selected by Google to participate in their Coral alpha program, and are looking forward to our continued cooperation. The Coral platform gives us the ability to run our screening ML models inside a handheld device; greatly expanding the access and ease of diabetic retinopathy screening.”

Finally, we’re expanding our distributor network to make it easier to get Coral boards into your hands around the world. This month, Seeed and NXP will begin to sell Coral products, in addition to Mouser.

We're excited to keep evolving the Coral platform, please keep sending us feedback at [email protected].

You can see the full release notes on Coral site.

More collaboration insights in the Activity dashboard

This announcement was made at Google Cloud Next ‘19 in San Francisco. Check out Next OnAir to tune into the livestream or watch session recordings following the event.

Quick Launch Summary 

We’re introducing two new features to the Activity dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides:

Sharing history
Sharing history provides users with granular visibility into how your document is being shared with others across your organization and elsewhere. You’ll now see who shared access with who and what level editing access they’ve been granted.



Comment trend 
Comment trend will help users visualize the conversations in a particular document, showing the number of comments, suggestions, and replies created per day. A graph will display the number of new comment threads, replies, and unresolved comments over the lifetime of a document.



These updates add more context to the Activity dashboard, a feature we launched last year to help users see who’s viewed a particular document and viewer trends. These additions will further flesh out the Activity dashboard, making it a centralized hub where document owners and editors can see how other collaborators are engaging with their content.


Availability 

Rollout details 

G Suite editions 
  • Available to all G Suite editions. 
On/off by default? 
  • This feature will be ON by default.

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Optimize your subscriptions with new insights in the Play Console

Posted by Daniel Schramm, Product Manager, Google Play

Since launching on Google Play nearly 7 years ago, subscriptions have proven to be an essential element in creating sustainable mobile app businesses; 89 of the top 100 highest grossing apps on Google Play in the US now provide subscription products. As the market matures, it is becoming increasingly important for subscription developers to optimize both subscriber conversion and retention in order to maintain growth. To help you do that, we're rolling out new insights available directly in the Play Console.

Subscription retention report

Example subscription retention report data in the Play Console. Source: Google Internal Data.

The recently updated subscription retention report shows how well you are retaining subscribers, along with how well subscribers convert from free trial, introductory price, and first to second payment.

You can configure two cohorts based on SKU, country, and subscription start date. This is particularly useful for evaluating the success of A/B tests; for example, to determine if changing the duration of a free trial has an impact on free trial conversion.

Example free trial conversion data in the Play Console. Source: Google Internal Data.

Cancellation survey results

Retaining your existing subscribers is just as important as acquiring new subscribers, so we have updated the subscription cancellations report to give more insight into voluntary and involuntary cancellations.

The launch of the subscriptions center last year introduced a cancellation survey allowing users to give developers feedback as to why they were cancelling, with results available through the Google Play Developer API. To make these results easier to access and monitor, we now surface daily aggregates directly within the Play Console, along with the ability to download written responses in a CSV.

Example cancellation survey responses in the Play Console. Source: Google Internal Data.

Recover more users

Involuntary cancellations, which occur when a user's form of payment fails, account for over a third of all cancellations. The new recovery performance cards in the cancellation report helps you understand how effectively you are recovering users with grace period and account hold, and the day the subscriptions were recovered to help you evaluate the effectiveness of recovery messaging.

Example account hold performance recovery card in the Play Console. Source: Google Internal Data.

Make sure you've set up grace periods and account hold for your apps! We've seen that developers who use both grace period and account hold see more than a 3x increase in decline recovery rate from 10% to 33%. Discover more information on grace period and account hold.

You can find the subscription retention and cancellation reports linked from the bottom of the Subscriptions page, in the Financial reports section of the Play Console. If you don't have access to financial reporting, ask your developer account owner for permission to view financial data.

Example account hold performance recovery card in the Play Console. Source: Google Internal Data.

We hope this new reporting gives you new insights to optimize your subscription business, and we look forward to sharing more with you at Google I/O in May.

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Announcing the 2019 NYC Google Ad Manager API Workshop

We’re excited to announce another Google Ad Manager API Workshop in NYC on May 8, 2019. If you’re a regular user of the Ad Manager API and Google Publisher Tags, then you’re sure to find something of interest at this event.

What is it?

A half-day event featuring technical talks by Google engineers and office hours with Google's Developer Relations team. Doors will open at 12:45pm and our keynote presentation will kick off at 1 o’clock. We will have talks on the following topics:
  • Serverless API integrations using Google Cloud Functions
  • Strategies and hands-on demos of tools for faster loading pages and ads
  • Advanced techniques for extracting data that isn't available in the reporting API

Who is the target audience?

The event is targeted toward developers who use or are interested in using the Ad Manager API. The talks will be technical in nature, so a technical background is recommended for all attendees. This event is an opportunity for you to learn more about the API's capabilities and its newest features. This is also an opportunity for you to share feedback by talking directly with Googlers who work on the API.

Where is it?

Google’s Chelsea Market Office
75 Ninth Avenue,
New York, NY 10011

How do I sign up?

To register, please visit our website for this event. Seating is limited, so after you register, we will reach back out to you to confirm your spot at the workshop.
 - , Ad Manager API Team

Google Pay launches gold buying, in collaboration with MMTC-PAMP India

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/XI79Nhf_yN3T6YHPF_LUF3OXo5zEbqwIFI8bocRtA7n1oz5kGdUCsJlAYIKxRVK2vSvgU9HwvZvNjaHGc07BXU7HQVPb6aw-r1tK5ZyA4C9_vpv1s9UpmBWSxLjdSfcEswhB8KmQ Ambarish Kenghe Director - Product Management Google Pay
Users can now buy 24 karat gold securely from their phone

Gold is core to Indian culture and tradition, making India the world’s second largest consumer of gold. Indians buy gold to mark auspicious occasions each year.

To make Google Pay even more useful, you can now buy and sell gold, securely from your phone, right within Google Pay!

Backed by MMTC-PAMP India, the country’s only LBMA accredited gold refinery, users can buy 99.99% 24 karat gold, right within the app. The gold, which can be purchased for any value, is stored on behalf of the user, by MMTC-PAMP, in secure vaults and can be sold at any time at the latest price, refreshed every few minutes, as displayed on Google Pay.



 . 




Buy gold securely on Google Pay with a few taps

This feature is created for millions of Indians who buy gold especially during festivals like Akshaya Tritiya, Dhanteras or Diwali. Now, the purchase of gold is possible, right on your mobile phone, from wherever you are. No need to visit a jeweller during a busy festive occasion.

We’re very excited to design this feature  especially to meet specific needs of Indian users, and we look forward to learning from your feedback!

Posted by Ambarish Kenghe, Director - Product Management, Google Pay, India

How we search for bow wows and meows

It’s not quite caturday, and we’re a few months away from the dog days of summer, but searches for pets never paws. Around the world, people constantly ask Google questions about their furry friends, so there’s no time like the present for a good old fashioned (OMG-look-at-that-little) face-off.


Data visualization designer Nadieh Bremer, lover of canines and felines alike, worked with our News Lab team to capture all your cat-like curiosity about why your purr-fect pals (or barky buds) act the way they do using Google Trends data. Today we’re sharing a delightful new site that digs into those questions, and even throws us a bone and answers a few.

Why do cats and dogs title

Quirky Questions

Why do cats like boxes? Why are they afraid of cucumbers? (Scaredy cats!) Why do they like to knead soft surfaces? You asked (literally), and we (attempt to) answer. Visit the site to explore these questions, and more!

Dog eat grass

Why do dogs...

  • Lick

  • Eat grass

  • Eat poop

  • Howl

  • Hump

  • Smell

  • Bark

  • Shake

  • Scratch

  • Bite

Cat knead

Why do cats...

  • Purr

  • Knead

  • Lick

  • Meow

  • Bite

  • Rub

  • Scratch

  • Eat grass

  • Sleep so much

  • Like boxes


Global Pet Preferences

We may not all definitively be a cat or dog “person,” but when it comes to searches, every country leans one way or another. Dive in and doggie-paddle around in nation-by-nation data.


Dog and Cat Searches Globally

If the site didn’t quite satiate your need for pet knowledge, I’ll leave you with my own assessment that answers some of the most iconic cat and dog questions of all time:


Do cats really rule? Inconclusive. Do dogs really drool? I’ve seen some evidence.

Source: Search


Summary: Next 2019 announcements

Google Cloud Next 2019 is happening now in San Francisco. To learn more about the event and tune into sessions, click here.

For a summary of the announcements from the event, see our Cloud blog posts about how we’re helping businesses work faster, smarter and more collaboratively in G Suite, and increasing trust in Google Cloud with visibility, control and automation.

For details of today’s announcements, see the posts on this blog:

Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for more announcements throughout the event.

New security assessment program for apps on G Suite Marketplace

This announcement was made at Google Cloud Next ‘19 in San Francisco. Check out Next OnAir to tune into the livestream or watch session recordings following the event.

What’s changing 

We’re starting the G Suite Marketplace (GSM) security assessment program, which will enable developers to optionally submit their GSM apps for review by a third-party security firm. The assessment includes penetration tests, a deployment review, and a policy and procedure review. Apps that pass the security assessment will display a security badge on their Marketplace listing.

You may notice:

  • A “Security Assessment’ badge on marketplace listings. 
  • A “Security Assessment” badge on app detail pages. 
  • A “Security Assessment” section on the app detail page. 


We’re opening the program for developer submissions now. Monitor the G Suite Updates blog for ongoing updates on the program. Find out more about the security assessment program here.


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it 

By highlighting apps that have been assessed to meet certain security standards, we hope it will be easier for you to find apps that may meet your specific organizational policies. This means you can more quickly identify and assess apps that you can whitelist for your users to help them be productive.

How to get started 


  • Admins: Find out more about the program and what to look for here.  
  • End users: No action needed 


Helpful links 




Availability 

We’re opening the program for developer submissions now. Monitor the G Suite Updates blog for more details on the program. Find out more about the security assessment program here.

The “Security Assessment” badge will indicate apps that have passed the assessment



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