Year in Review: 12 awesome ways for developers to learn, build, and grow with Google Workspace

Posted by Matthew Izatt, Product Lead, Google Workspace Platform

For millions of our customers, 2022 brought an abundance of change in the way they connect, collaborate, and get things done. Frontline workers at customers like Globe Telecom and general contractor BHI benefited from digital transformation on all fronts by quickly getting the apps they needed to do their jobs in the field. Office and remote workers, meanwhile, adjusted to hybrid work by leveraging ready-made tools from partners like DocuSign and Asana or they built custom desk booking applications.

2022 was also a year of growth. Google Workspace now has more than 3 billion users and over 8 million paying customers across the globe. And the Google Workspace Marketplace passed a lifetime milestone of driving more than 5 billion app installs. To wrap up a year marked by so much change, we’ve recapped some of the biggest updates that make Google Workspace the most open and extensible platform for users, customers, and developers alike.

1.    Build software with more agility with our DevOps integrations

    Google Workspace gives you real-time visibility into project progress and decisions to help you ship quality code fast and stay connected with your stakeholders, all without switching tools and tabs. By leveraging integrated applications from our partners, you can pull valuable information out of silos, making collaborating on requirements docs, code reviews, bug triage, deployment updates, and monitoring operations easy for the whole team. This year we partnered with popular DevOps tools to help you do your job better:

    • Asana: Plan and execute together, with Asana integrations you can coordinate and manage everything from daily tasks to cross-functional strategic initiatives.
    • GitHub: Teams can quickly push new commits, make pull requests, do code reviews, and provide real-time feedback that improves the quality of their code—all from Google Chat.
    • Jira: Accelerate the entire QA process in the development workflow. The Jira for Google Chat app acts as a team member in the conversation, sending new issues and contextual updates as they are reported to improve the quality of your code and keep everyone informed on your Jira projects.
    • PagerDuty: Enables developers, DevOps, IT operations, and business leaders to prevent and resolve business-impacting incidents for an exceptional customer experience—all from Google Chat.
     
    2.    Apply to our Developer Preview Program: get early access to upcoming platform features

    This year we launched the Google Workspace Developer Preview program to get you access to the new APIs and stay in touch with the latest updates on the Google Workspace platform. Features in developer preview have already completed early development phases, so they're ready for implementation. This program gives you the chance to shape the final stages of feature development with feedback, get pre-release support, and have your integration ready for public use on launch day. Apply to the Developer Preview Program today.

    For Google Chat this year we announced that you could programmatically create new spaces and add members on behalf of users via the Google Chat API. These latest additions to the Chat API unlock some sought-after scenarios for developers looking for new ways to extend Chat. For example, PagerDuty leveraged the API as part of their PagerDuty for Google Chat app. The app allows the incident team to isolate and focus on the problem at hand without being distracted by having to set up a new space, or further distract any folks in the current space who aren’t a part of the resolution team for a specific incident. All of this will be done seamlessly through PagerDuty for Chat as part of the natural flow of working with Google Chat.

    Screen grab of PagerDuty for Google Chat keeping a demo business up to date on service-impacting incidents.
    PagerDuty for Google Chat keeps the business up to date on service-impacting incidents.

    We are adding functionality to Chat apps so developers can soon add widgets like a date time picker, or design their layout with multiple columns to make better use of space. We believe these new layout options will open more ways for developers to build engaging apps for users. To help users find and learn more about apps we’ve added “About pages” for apps and making apps discoverable in the compose bar in Chat. Apply to our Developer Preview Program to get early access to the Google Chat APIs.

    We also announced new functionality for app developers to leverage the Google Meet video conferencing product through our new Meet Live Sharing API. Users can now come together and share experiences with each other inside an app, such as streaming a TV show, queuing up videos to watch on YouTube, collaborating on a music playlist, joining in a dance party, or working out together though Google Meet. If you want to try out the APIs, you can apply for access through the Developer Preview Program.

    Moving image showing how Miro for Google Meet uses the new Meet APIs for an integrated experience within Meet.
    Miro for Google Meet uses the new Meet APIs for an integrated experience within Meet.

    3.    Connect your customers with critical information with Smart Chips for Google Docs

      We expanded smart chips to our ecosystem of partners, allowing our users to add even more rich data, more context, and critical information right into the flow of their work. With these new third-party smart chips, you will be able to tag and see critical information from partner applications using @-mentions, and easily insert interactive information and previews from third-party apps directly into a Google Doc. Several of our partners, including AO Docs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau, and ZenDesk, are now developing third-party smart chips to add more value to your Google Docs experience. Smart chips will be available to developers to build out their app integrations in 2023.

      Moving image showing how Smart Chips work in Google docs
      Smart Chips will be available to third-party developers in 2023.

      4.    Grow your business with the Recommended for Google Workspace program

      Each year, we evaluate the apps on Google Workspace Marketplace and recommend a select number that are enhancing the Google Workspace experience and helping people work in powerful new ways. Each undergoes reviews by both Google and an independent third-party security firm to ensure they meet our highest standards of integration and security requirements. For 2022 here’s the selection of Recommended for Google Workspace: AODocs, Copper, Dialpad, DocuSign, LumApps, Mailmeteor, Miro, RingCentral, Sheetgo, Signeasy, Supermetrics, and Yet Another Mail Merge. Our application for Recommended for Google Workspace is now open, apply today.

      Recommended for Google Workspace 2023 application is open!
      Become an app Recommended for Google Workspace for 2023, apply today.

      5.    Manage Google Workspace APIs with ease

        We recently added a unified way to access Google Workspace APIs through the Google Cloud Console—APIs for Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Chat, Slides, Calendar, and many more. From there, you now have a central location to manage all your Google Workspace APIs and view all of the aggregated metrics for the API in use. Watch this how-to video to get started.

        Google worksspace APIs in Cloud Console
        Developers can now manage their Google Workspace APIs from within the Google Cloud Console.

        6.    Create surveys, questionnaires, and quizzes and evaluate the results programmatically

          The new Google Forms API joins the large family of APIs available to developers under Google Workspace. The Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms, acting on responses, and empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms. Watch this introduction to the Google Forms API to get started.

          Customer satisfaction Surveys created in Google Forms shown on desktop and mobile
          The new Google Forms API allows you to programmatically create and manage Forms.

          7.    Build intelligent business apps with No-Code and Low-Code

            Google Apps Script is a low-code, cloud based JavaScript development environment for Google Workspace that makes it easy for anyone to build custom business solutions across several Google products. This year we completed the updates for our new IDE v2, offering a more modern and simplified development experience which makes it quicker and easier to build solutions that make Google Workspace apps more useful for your organization.

            If you are new to Apps Script, figuring out where to begin can be a hurdle, this year we released 10 new sample solutions to help you get started to bring our number to more than 30! From data analysis to automated emails, you’ll find sample solutions to get you started quickly.

            AppSheet is Google’s platform for building no-code custom apps and workflows to automate business processes. It lets app creators build and deploy end-to-end apps and automations without writing code.

            The new Apps Script connector for AppSheet, launched this year, ties everything together: AppSheet, Apps Script, Google Workspace, and Google Workspace’s many developer APIs. This integration lets no-code app developers using AppSheet greatly extend the capabilities of their no-code apps by allowing them to call and pass data to Apps Script functions. One way to think about this integration is that it bridges no-code (AppSheet) with low-code (Apps Script).

            AppSheet databases, announced in preview this year, is a built-in database for professional and citizen developers to easily and securely manage their data. AppSheet databases will give users access to an easy to use, first party database for creating and managing data. Get started and try AppSheet for free.

            AppSheet database
            AppSheet databases are now available in preview.

            8.    Learn to build amazing solutions on our YouTube channel

              This year, we introduced our dedicated YouTube channel for Google Workspace Developers. The channel serves as an ever-growing collection of our most helpful videos, allowing developers of all skill levels and interests to learn about building solutions with Google Workspace.

              An example of a video you will find on the Google Workspace Developers channel: Anatomy of Google Chat apps - Basic interaction
              Our new YouTube channel for Google Workspace developers has dozens of how-to videos for you.

              9.    Connect with Cloud experts and community as a Google Cloud Innovator

                Community building is one of the most effective ways to support developers, which is why we created Google Cloud Innovators.This new community program was designed for developers and technical practitioners using Google Cloud and everyone is welcome. In 2022, we kicked off the inaugural Innovators Hive, a live, interactive, and virtual event for our global Innovators community. Hive offered rich technical content presented by Champion Innovators and Google engineering leaders. Become a Google Cloud Innovator today.

                Google Cloud Innovators logo in a solid black frame with text that reads 'Welcome, Innovators'
                The Google Cloud Innovators program is open to all levels of creators and developers.

                10.    Integrate and extend Google Workspace: top sessions from Google I/O

                  Learn about the latest innovations and discover how developers can integrate and extend Google Workspace. Here are a few of my favorite sessions from I/O:

                  Google I/O Logo

                  11.    Build the future of work: top sessions from Google Cloud Next

                  Watch on-demand videos from our biggest Cloud event of the year and learn from product experts and partners to level up your skills.


                  12.    Engage with the Google Workspace team and ecosystem at our Developer Summits

                  We also had our inaugural Google Workspace Developer Summit series take place in Paris and London. It was an amazing time meeting developers and IT teams from customers and partners that attended from throughout the EMEA region. Watch out for a summit near you in 2023 to learn more about the latest development features for Google Workspace from our Developer Advocates and build connections with the developer community, subscribe to our newsletter to get notified.

                  Photo of Developers listening to a presentation at Google Paris during Google Workplace Developer Summit
                  Developers gather at Google Paris for the Google Workspace Developer Summit.

                  2022 Wrap-up

                  We are thankful to you in helping make 2022 a great year for the Google Workspace developer community. We look forward to announcing more innovations and having more conversations with you in 2023. To keep track of all the latest announcements and developer updates for Google Workspace please subscribe to our monthly newsletter. Happy holidays and a peaceful New Year!

                  New default setting for content managers to modify shared drives coming in February 2023

                  What’s changing

                  In 2018, we launched the Content manager role, making it easier to manage files in shared drives. Currently, content managers have the ability to edit, reorganize, and delete shared drive content, but they cannot share folders in shared drives. 

                  Starting today, admins will see a new shared drive setting that can be enabled or disabled to give content managers the ability to share folders in shared drives. 

                  In February 2023, all content managers will have the ability to share folders by default. If you’d like this feature to remain off for end users, disable the setting now. 


                  Who’s impacted 

                  Admins and end users 


                  Why it matters 

                  Enabling content managers to share folders is a highly requested feature that will help organizations better manage access to their data. 


                  Additional details 

                  We will provide an update in February 2023 with the exact date that all content managers will have the ability to share folders by default. 


                  Getting started 

                  • Admins: 
                    • This setting is currently ON by default. To disable the setting for content managers to share folders, go to the "Sharing settings" in the Drive and Docs section of the Admin Console > scroll to the "Shared drive creation" section > change the "Allow content managers to share folders" setting to OFF. 
                      • Note: If enabled, Content managers will be able to share folders starting in February 2023. 
                    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing shared drives as an admin. 
                  • End users: If enabled by your admin, content managers can share folders starting February 2023. Visit the Help Center to learn more about shared drives. 

                  Rollout pace 

                  Admin controls: 
                  End user setting: 

                  Availability 

                  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Business customers 
                  • Not available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Frontline, legacy G Suite Basic customers 
                  • Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

                  Resources 

                  Beta Channel Update for Desktop

                  The Beta channel has been updated to 109.0.5414.36 for Windows, Mac and Linux .

                  A full list of changes in this build is available in the log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how here. If you find a new issues, 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.


                  Prudhvikumar Bommana

                  Formation of Robust Bound States of Interacting Photons

                  Posted by Alexis Morvan and Trond Andersen, Research Scientists, Google Quantum AI

                  When quantum computers were first proposed, they were hoped to be a way to better understand the quantum world. With a so-called “quantum simulator,” one could engineer a quantum computer to investigate how various quantum phenomena arise, including those that are intractable to simulate with a classical computer.

                  But making a useful quantum simulator has been a challenge. Until now, quantum simulations with superconducting qubits have predominantly been used to verify pre-existing theoretical predictions and have rarely explored or discovered new phenomena. Only a few experiments with trapped ions or cold atoms have revealed new insights. Superconducting qubits, even though they are one of the main candidates for universal quantum computing and have demonstrated computational capabilities beyond classical reach, have so far not delivered on their potential for discovery.

                  In “Formation of Robust Bound States of Interacting Photons”, published in Nature, we describe a previously unpredicted phenomenon first discovered through experimental investigation. First, we present the experimental confirmation of the theoretical prediction of the existence of a composite particle of interacting photons, or a bound state, using the Google Sycamore quantum processor. Second, while studying this system, we discovered that even though one might guess the bound states to be fragile, they remain robust to perturbations that we expected to have otherwise destroyed them. Not only does this open the possibility of designing systems that leverage interactions between photons, it also marks a step forward in the use of superconducting quantum processors to make new scientific discoveries by simulating non-equilibrium quantum dynamics.


                  Overview

                  Photons, or quanta of electromagnetic radiation like light and microwaves, typically don’t interact. For example, two intersecting flashlight beams will pass through one another undisturbed. In many applications, like telecommunications, the weak interactions of photons is a valuable feature. For other applications, such as computers based on light, the lack of interactions between photons is a shortcoming.

                  In a quantum processor, the qubits host microwave photons, which can be made to interact through two-qubit operations. This allows us to simulate the XXZ model, which describes the behavior of interacting photons. Importantly, this is one of the few examples of integrable models, i.e., one with a high degree of symmetry, which greatly reduces its complexity. When we implement the XXZ model on the Sycamore processor, we observe something striking: the interactions force the photons into bundles known as bound states.

                  Using this well-understood model as a starting point, we then push the study into a less-understood regime. We break the high level of symmetries displayed in the XXZ model by adding extra sites that can be occupied by the photons, making the system no longer integrable. While this nonintegrable regime is expected to exhibit chaotic behavior where bound states dissolve into their usual, solitary selves, we instead find that they survive!


                  Bound Photons

                  To engineer a system that can support the formation of bound states, we study a ring of superconducting qubits that host microwave photons. If a photon is present, the value of the qubit is “1”, and if not, the value is “0”. Through the so-called “fSim” quantum gate, we connect neighboring sites, allowing the photons to hop around and interact with other photons on the nearest-neighboring sites.

                  Superconducting qubits can be occupied or unoccupied with microwave photons. The “fSim” gate operation allows photons to hop and interact with each other. The corresponding unitary evolution has a hopping term between two sites (orange) and an interaction term corresponding to an added phase when two adjacent sites are occupied by a photon.
                  We implement the fSim gate between neighboring qubits (left) to effectively form a ring of 24 interconnected qubits on which we simulate the behavior of the interacting photons (right).

                  The interactions between the photons affect their so-called “phase.” This phase keeps track of the oscillation of the photon’s wavefunction. When the photons are non-interacting, their phase accumulation is rather uninteresting. Like a well-rehearsed choir, they’re all in sync with one another. In this case, a photon that was initially next to another photon can hop away from its neighbor without getting out of sync. Just as every person in the choir contributes to the song, every possible path the photon can take contributes to the photon’s overall wavefunction. A group of photons initially clustered on neighboring sites will evolve into a superposition of all possible paths each photon might have taken.

                  When photons interact with their neighbors, this is no longer the case. If one photon hops away from its neighbor, its rate of phase accumulation changes, becoming out of sync with its neighbors. All paths in which the photons split apart overlap, leading to destructive interference. It would be like each choir member singing at their own pace — the song itself gets washed out, becoming impossible to discern through the din of the individual singers. Among all the possible configuration paths, the only possible scenario that survives is the configuration in which all photons remain clustered together in a bound state. This is why interaction can enhance and lead to the formation of a bound state: by suppressing all other possibilities in which photons are not bound together.

                  Left: Evolution of interacting photons forming a bound state. Right: Time goes from left to right, each path represents one of the paths that can break the 2-photon bonded state. Due to interactions, these paths interfere destructively, preventing the photons from splitting apart.
                  Occupation probability versus gate cycle, or discrete time step, for n-photon bound states. We prepare bound states of varying sizes and watch them evolve. We observe that the majority of the photons (darker colors) remain bound together.

                  In our processor, we start by putting two to five photons on adjacent sites (i.e., initializing two to five adjacent qubits in “1”, and the remaining qubits in “0”), and then study how they propagate. First, we notice that in the theoretically predicted parameter regime, they remain stuck together. Next, we find that the larger bound states move more slowly around the ring, consistent with the fact that they are “heavier”. This can be seen in the plot above where the lattice sites closest to Site 12, the initial position of the photons, remain darker than the others with increasing number of photons (nph) in the bound state, indicating that with more photons bound together there is less propagation around the ring.


                  Bound States Behave Like Single Composite Particles

                  To more rigorously show that the bound states indeed behave as single particles with well-defined physical properties, we devise a method to measure how the energy of the particles changes with momentum, i.e., the energy-momentum dispersion relation.

                  To measure the energy of the bound state, we use the fact that the energy difference between two states determines how fast their relative phase grows with time. Hence, we prepare the bound state in a superposition with the state that has no photons, and measure their phase difference as a function of time and space. Then, to convert the result of this measurement to a dispersion relation, we utilize a Fourier transform, which translates position and time into momentum and energy, respectively. We’re left with the familiar energy-momentum relationship of excitations in a lattice.

                  Spectroscopy of bound states. We compare the phase accumulation of an n-photon bound state with that of the vacuum (no photons) as a function of lattice site and time. A 2D Fourier transform yields the dispersion relation of the bound-state quasiparticle.

                  Breaking Integrability

                  The above system is “integrable,” meaning that it has a sufficient number of conserved quantities that its dynamics are constrained to a small part of the available computational space. In such integrable regimes, the appearance of bound states is not that surprising. In fact, bound states in similar systems were predicted in 2012, then observed in 2013. However, these bound states are fragile and their existence is usually thought to derive from integrability. For more complex systems, there is less symmetry and integrability is quickly lost. Our initial idea was to probe how these bound states disappear as we break integrability to better understand their rigidity.

                  To break integrability, we modify which qubits are connected with fSim gates. We add qubits so that at alternating sites, in addition to hopping to each of its two nearest-neighboring sites, a photon can also hop to a third site oriented radially outward from the ring.

                  While a bound state is constrained to a very small part of phase space, we expected that the chaotic behavior associated with integrability breaking would allow the system to explore the phase space more freely. This would cause the bound states to break apart. We find that this is not the case. Even when the integrability breaking is so strong that the photons are equally likely to hop to the third site as they are to hop to either of the two adjacent ring sites, the bound state remains intact, up to the decoherence effect that makes them slowly decay (see paper for details).

                  Top: New geometry to break integrability. Alternating sites are connected to a third site oriented radially outward. This increases the complexity of the system, and allows for potentially chaotic behavior. Bottom: Despite this added complexity pushing the system beyond integrability, we find that the 3-photon bound state remains stable even for a relatively large perturbation. The probability of remaining bound decreases slowly due to decoherence (see paper).

                  Conclusion

                  We don’t yet have a satisfying explanation for this unexpected resilience. We speculate that it may be related to a phenomenon called prethermalization, where incommensurate energy scales in the system can prevent a system from reaching thermal equilibrium as quickly as it otherwise would. We believe further investigations will hopefully lead to new insights into many-body quantum physics, including the interplay of prethermalization and integrability.


                  Acknowledgements

                  We would like to thank our Quantum Science Communicator Katherine McCormick for her help writing this blog post.

                  Source: Google AI Blog


                  Per-App Language Preferences – Part 2

                  Posted by Neelansh Sahai Android Developer Relations Engineer (on Twitter and LinkedIn)

                  Context

                  In part 1 of the Per-App Language Preferences blog, we discussed what the feature is, how developers benefit from it, how to implement the feature, and the strong business impact of catering to multilingual users. In this part of the blog, we'll discuss how various top apps migrated to the Per-App Languages Feature and how it benefited them.

                  Developer Success Stories

                  Here are some top apps that migrated to the Per-App Languages Preferences APIs. Let’s have a look at them.
                  LinkedIn Logo

                  LinkedIn is a business and employment oriented online platform that is primarily used for professional networking and career development. It bridges the gap between an employer and a job seeker, by providing both a common ground to connect. LinkedIn operates over a huge set of 875+ M registered users spread across more than 200 countries and territories.

                  Due to the several regions they cover, it becomes important to support multiple languages in the app. LinkedIn supports 26 Languages in their app right now, and this brings forward an opportunity to provide the users with the best experiences of latest android features. With this as the target, the LinkedIn team invested their efforts in migrating to the new Per-App Language Preferences APIs, and went ahead to provide their consumers the complete flexibility and features of Android 13. The team also quoted, “It was an easy integration with minimal code changes”.

                  MyJio Logo

                  MyJio is the-one-stop destination for recharges, managing accounts & Jio devices, UPI & payments, entertainment services with movies, music, news, games, quizzes & a lot more. With over 500 M+ total installs spread across the globe, MyJio aims to provide its users better access to a variety of utilities. Also as the user-base of MyJio is quite vast, the app supports a total of over 12+ Languages. With these many features and a wide diversity of active multilingual users, MyJio has a strong reason to localize their app using the best practices.

                  MyJio developers implemented the Per App Language Preferences APIs right along with the Android 13 release, allowing their users the flexibility to select a language for their app from system settings as well.

                  One of the major use-cases was to retain user's language preference, when users switch devices and then log in again from the same account. In this case, when the data is restored from a previous backup, the language preference is also restored along with the rest of the data, maintaining the seamless MyJio user experience across devices. This shows the API's flexibility to work well with other Android features like Backup and Restore, and helps developers give their users a better user experience.
                   
                  Zomato Logo
                  With over 16.7M+ monthly transacting customers in more than 1000 cities across India, it is one of the most popular food ordering and restaurant discovery services in the region. This also means that the app is used in several languages. Zomato currently supports over 15 languages on its app.

                  The Zomato team wanted to make the user experience for users across geographies to be very seamless and delightful. Localizing the app based on the region and user preference was an important step in this direction. Zomato was quick to respond to the changes that were introduced in Android 13. They went ahead and migrated their language-switching logic to Per-App Language Preferences, within a week. Thereby helping their users find an easy way to use Zomato in their preferred language.

                  FROM  THE  DEVELOPERS :

                  At Zomato, providing the best customer experience possible is the core of our business and we believe localization is very critical in giving our customers a pleasant experience on the platform. Our team integrated with the new A13 Per-App Language Preferences API provided by Google to make it easy for our users to switch their preferred language on Zomato.

                  The ease of integrating the API helped us get it done effortlessly in less than a week’s time. Backward compatibility and stability of the API ensured that we are not compromising on the experience of our customers. With this, we hope to provide a better experience to the customer in their journey of online ordering via Zomato.

                  OkCredit Logo

                  OkCredit is a credit management app with over 50M+ downloads, having total annual transactions of around 50 Billion USD on the app. As OKCredit supports both local and large-scale businesses and also around 10+ languages in their app, it was critical for them to support the ability to seamlessly switch the app language so that more users are able to onboard on their platform.

                  The developers from OkCredit have always been quick to adopt changes introduced in Android. They recently adopted the Per-App Language Preferences APIs within the timeframe of a week, providing their end users a better and more seamless experience around switching their app languages at their convenience.


                  FROM  THE  DEVELOPERS :

                  The demand for using apps in vernacular language is steadily growing in India. After Google announced Per-App Language Preferences recently, it was a straightforward decision to integrate them. The implementation was straightforward, stable, and compatible with older Android versions.



                  Conclusion

                  We saw that some top apps have implemented the Per-App Language Preferences APIs in their apps and have also circulated the updates out to the users. This easy migration was possible in such a short timespan due to the low amount of effort investment and minimal code changes required. Lastly, here are some resources that can help you understand the feature better.

                  1. Per-App Language Preferences
                  2. Sample App ( Compose )
                  3. Sample App ( Views )
                  4. Per-app language preferences (YouTube Video)

                  Trust in transparency: Private Compute Core

                  Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, Dianne Hackborn, and Eugenio Marchiori

                  We care deeply about privacy. We also know that trust is built by transparency. This blog, and the technical paper reference within, is an example of that commitment: we describe an important new Android privacy infrastructure called Private Compute Core (PCC).

                  Some of our most exciting machine learning features use continuous sensing data — information from the microphone, camera, and screen. These features keep you safe, help you communicate, and facilitate stronger connections with people you care about. To unlock this new generation of innovative concepts, we built a specialized sandbox to privately process and protect this data.

                  Android Private Compute Core

                  PCC is a secure, isolated data processing environment inside of the Android operating system that gives you control of the data inside, such as deciding if, how, and when it is shared with others. This way, PCC can enable features like Live Translate without sharing continuous sensing data with service providers, including Google.

                  PCC is part of Protected Computing, a toolkit of technologies that transform how, when, and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety. For example, by employing cloud enclaves, edge processing, or end-to-end encryption we ensure sensitive data remains in exclusive control of the user.

                  How Private Compute Core works

                  PCC is designed to enable innovative features while keeping the data needed for them confidential from other subsystems. We do this by using techniques such as limiting Interprocess Communications (IPC) binds and using isolated processes. These are included as part of the Android Open Source Project and controlled by publicly available surfaces, such as Android framework APIs. For features that run inside PCC, continuous sensing data is processed safely and seamlessly while keeping it confidential.

                  To stay useful, any machine learning feature has to get better over time. To keep the models that power PCC features up to date, while still keeping the data private, we leverage federated learning and analytics. Network calls to improve the performance of these models can be monitored using Private Compute Services.

                  Let us show you our work

                  The publicly-verifiable architectures in PCC demonstrate how we strive to deliver confidentiality and control, and do it in a way that is verifiable and visible to users. In addition to this blog, we provide this transparency through public documentation and open-source code — we hope you'll have a look below.

                  To explain in even more detail, we’ve published a technical whitepaper for researchers and interested members of the community. In it, we describe data protections in-depth, the processes and mechanisms we’ve built, and include diagrams of the privacy structures for continuous sensing features.

                  Private Compute Services was recently open-sourced as well, and we invite our Android community to inspect the code that controls the data management and egress policies. We hope you'll examine and report back on PCC's implementation, so that our own documentation is not the only source of analysis.

                  Our commitment to transparency

                  Being transparent and engaged with users, developers, researchers, and technologists around the world is part of what makes Android special and, we think, more trustworthy. The paradigm of distributed trust, where credibility is built up from verification by multiple trusted sources, continues to extend this core value. Open sourcing the mechanisms for data protection and processes is one step towards making privacy verifiable. The next step is verification by the community — and we hope you'll join in.

                  We'll continue sharing our progress and look forward to hearing feedback from our users and community on the evolution of Private Compute Core and data privacy at Google.

                  Chrome Dev for Android Update

                  Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Dev 110 (110.0.5462.3) for Android. It's now available on Google Play.

                  You can see a partial list of the changes in the Git log. For details on new features, check out the Chromium blog, and for details on web platform updates, check here.

                  If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

                  Krishna Govind
                  Google Chrome