Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – May 1, 2026

Move from conversation to creation with file generation in Gemini

Gemini can now transform your ideas, using conversational prompts, directly into thoughtfully formatted files, such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, PDFs and more, directly in your chats with Gemini. | Learn more about how to move from conversation to creation with file generation in Gemini.

Students can now create personal class notebooks with NotebookLM in Google Classroom

With this launch, we’re allowing students in higher education who are 18 years of age and older to create their own notebooks for courses in Google Classroom. | Learn more about students creating personal class notebooks with NotebookLM.

Workspace audit logs: New functionality and expanded event fields in the Admin console

We're releasing several enhancements to deepen the security investigation capabilities of the Workspace audit log, including expanded fields across many data sources. | Learn more about new functionality and expanded event fields in the Admin console.

New ways to customize AI-generated meeting notes

We are giving users more control over "Take notes for me" in Google Meet with new customization options and an improved Decisions section. | Learn more about new ways to customize AI-generated meeting notes.

New: Agent tools and security updates for Google Workspace developers

We're opening the Workspace MCP server to public developer preview and introducing a standardized tiering model for all agent tools inclusive of our APIs in Workspace. | Learn more about agent tools and security updates for Google Workspace developers.

Google Takeout Transfer now supports Google Photos for Education users

We’re expanding Google Takeout Transfer to include Google Photos, allowing users to migrate their memories from their school or university-issued Google account to a personal Google account. | Learn more about Google Takeout Transfer support for Google Photos.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
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Google Takeout Transfer now supports Google Photos for Education users

When users graduate or leave an organization, they can preserve their academic work by using Google Takeout Transfer to take their Google Drive and Gmail content with them. We’re now expanding Google Takeout Transfer to include Google Photos, allowing users to migrate their memories from their school or university-issued Google account to a personal Google account.

This is the first step in providing a clear migration path for Photos data, ensuring that creative work and personal history stays with individuals long after they leave an organization. When users navigate to takeout.google.com/transfer they will soon see an option to include Photos content. Note that users will need to have sufficient storage in their personal account to complete the transfer.

A browser window showing the third step ("Transfer your content" screen) within Google Takeout migration process. The screen displays three product toggles - Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos - all switched to the "on" position, indicating they are selected for transfer. Under the Google Photos section, the detailed text specifies "Photos, videos & albums you own". A banner at the bottom offers a Google AI plan to help the user secure more storage for the transfer, and a blue "Start Transfer" button is visible at the bottom left.

Users leaving your organization can now use Google Takeout to seamlessly copy and transfer their Google Photos content - including photos, videos, and albums - alongside their Drive and Gmail data to a personal Google account.

Later this year, we will introduce new Photos management and bulk-deletion capabilities in the admin console. These tools will provide better visibility into which users have migrated their data and allow you to proactively manage Photos content to help your institution free up critical pooled Drive storage. 

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Education: Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus

Resources

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New: Agent tools and security updates for Google Workspace developers

At Cloud Next ‘26, we announced a new suite of agent tools for Google Workspace, including a Workspace MCP server, command line interface (CLI), and remote MCP integrations. 

Today, we are opening the Workspace MCP server to public developer preview. As AI agents become a central part of how we work, they need a standardized way to access the right context and tools. The Workspace MCP server provides that bridge, allowing AI agents to safely tap into the richness of Workspace capabilities.

Workspace MCP server: Now in public developer preview

The Workspace MCP server allows developers to access a suite of dedicated tools to power agents interacting with Workspace data:

  • Gmail MCP: Profile access, drafting, searching, and read/write capabilities.
  • Drive MCP: File fetching, permissions management, listing, and uploading.
  • Calendar MCP: Finding available times and managing events.
  • Chat MCP: Finding conversations, searching messages, and reading/sending replies.
  • People dictionary MCP: Managing user contacts and accessing profile information.

Empower agents with a secure ecosystem

As these agents scale, we are committed to maintaining a healthy ecosystem by addressing the unique risks associated with large-scale agentic actions, such as API abuse and unintended large-scale data egress. To foster innovation while managing the potential impact of high-volume data access, we are introducing a standardized tiering model for all agent tools inclusive of our APIs in Workspace.

This model is designed to manage agent workflows at scale, providing a structure as application impact increases The framework is intended to maintain the agility of developers:

  • Empowering the community: We expect less than 1% of active Workspace developers will need to move beyond our standard usage tiers. This means the vast majority of our developer community can continue to build and innovate without friction.
  • Scalability with confidence: For those developers and agents that grow to serve millions of users, the model provides a clear, predictable path to scale safely, ensuring the performance and data integrity that enterprise customers expect.

Getting started

Rollout pace

  • Workspace MCP server: Gradual rollout starting May 1, 2026
  • Workspace API and MCP tiering: Updated usage quotas for new projects only will roll out starting May 1, 2026. We'll notify owners of existing projects at least 60 days before any changes go into effect to ensure a smooth transition.

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and developers

Resources

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Building with Gemini Embedding 2: Agentic multimodal RAG and beyond

Google has announced the general availability of Gemini Embedding 2, a unified model that maps text, images, video, audio, and documents into a single semantic space. This model allows developers to process interleaved multimodal inputs in a single request, significantly improving performance for tasks like agentic RAG, visual search, and content moderation. By supporting over 100 languages and offering features like task-specific prefixes and Matryoshka dimensionality reduction, the model provides a highly efficient and accurate foundation for building complex AI agents.

The Journey Begins: Meet the 2026 GSoC Contributors!

by Stephanie Taylor, Mary Radomile & Lucila Ortíz, Google Summer of Code

A warm welcome to the 1,141 Contributors of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2026! We are excited to start this new edition alongside our 184 mentoring orgs. Organizations reviewed a record-breaking 23,371 proposals to find the best matches for their communities.

2026 Application Statistics:

  • 15,245 applicants from 131 countries submitting a total of 23,371 proposals
  • Over 2,000 mentors and org admins

What's Next?

Before the first line of code is written, there is Community Bonding. This 3.5-week GSoC tradition is about more than just tool configuration; it's about immersion. It's a dedicated space for Contributors to master the codebase, align with community standards, and understand the 'why' behind their projects. By the time the coding period begins, every Contributor is ready to turn project fundamentals into real-world impact.

The official coding period begins on May 25. For our contributors, this period represents a deep dive into collaborative development, offering the chance to learn new tools and contribute to the heartbeat of open source projects.

Thank you, Mentors!

Finally, we want to express our deepest gratitude to our phenomenal Mentors and Org Admins. As AI profoundly shifts the landscape of open source communities, GSoC is no exception. Your patience, grit, and tireless volunteer efforts are the heartbeat of this program, ensuring its continued success as we welcome a new generation of contributors into the open source ecosystem.

New ways to customize AI-generated meeting notes

We are giving users more control over "Take notes for me" in Google Meet with new customization options and an improved Decisions section.

“Take notes for me” recently introduced customizations for meeting artifacts, such as the option to set your preferred level of detail for your notes. Now, users can tailor their notes to be more actionable and easier to digest by choosing exactly which sections they want to include.

An image showing where to toggle the sections for the “Take notes for me” feature in Google Meet.
Toggle which sections are enabled in-call.
Updates include:

  • Customizable notes sections: Users can now toggle specific sections on or off via the in-call menu, including Summary, Decisions, Next steps, and Details. These changes only affect your current meeting and will not impact your default view for future calls.
  • New “Decisions” section: This section explicitly captures outcomes and tracks their status, such as Aligned, Needs further discussion, Disagreed, or Shelved. Note that the Decisions section will initially be available in English only.
  • Improved summary: The summary section has been improved to be more concise and scannable, allowing you to quickly catch up on key points.
An animation showing the sections within the “Take notes for me” notes in Google Meet.
View Decisions and the New Summary in your Meeting Notes

These improvements will help make your meeting notes more actionable and scannable, and reduce the need to manually reformat notes after a call.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no specific admin control for this feature. It will be available to all users who have access to "Take notes for me."
  • End users: To use this feature, turn on “Take notes for me" in any of your meetings. Within the menu, try customizing which sections are included in your notes. In particular, explore the new summary and decisions sections. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Other Editions: Frontline Plus
  • Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra

Resources

Chrome Dev for Desktop Update

The Dev channel has been updated to 149.0.7815.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Chrome Release Team
Google Chrome

Product reporting changes for Google Ads starting June 15, 2026

Starting June 15, 2026, the Google Ads API will begin transitioning product reporting to include data from all Performance Max networks. This update also provides comprehensive performance metrics across all campaign types and channels, including Performance Max, Shopping, Video, App, and Demand Gen.

What is changing?

Previously, reporting for products in Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns was limited to high-level metrics like impressions and clicks. Also for Performance Max campaigns, only some networks were reported. This update introduces:

  • Expanded metrics for shopping_product: Cost and Conversion metrics will start returning data for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns, not just Shopping and Performance Max.
  • Consistent campaign reporting with shopping_performance_view: All campaign types that use Google Merchant Center (GMC) will have results returned with shopping_performance_view.
  • Network transparency for Performance Max: All networks will start being returned for Performance Max campaigns when querying for shopping_performance_view, so you may notice a one-time increase in all product reporting metrics for these campaigns. Note that data for these new metrics and expanded campaign coverage will only be available starting from June 15 2026. Historical API requests for dates prior to the launch will not contain this expanded data.

If you have any questions or want to discuss this post, please reach out to us on our “Google Advertising and Measurement Community” Discord server.

 - Dora Sun - Google Ads API Team