For Earth Day, an update on our commitments

In 2020, as part of our third decade of climate action, we established a bold set of goals to help build a carbon-free future for everyone. Today on Earth Day, we’re sharing recent progress we’ve made including new investments to help partners address climate change, product updates that allow everyone to make sustainable choices and highlights from our journey to net zero.

Helping our partners address climate change

To provide deeper insights into climate change data — like increased food insecurity, the nexus of health and climate and extreme weather events — we need to enable everyone to create solutions. We’ve continued to provide organizations, policymakers, researchers and more with the data, technology and resources they need to address climate change. Today we announced that Data Commons — our open-source platform built to organize public data and enable standardized, universal access to anyone — is now one of the world's largest knowledge graphs on sustainability. Data Commons has grown to include more than 100 data sources about the climate, health, food, crops, shelter, emissions and more.

Other initiatives we’ve recently announced to help partners include:

  • A Google.org Sustainability Seed Fund in Asia Pacific: This new $6 million fund provides organizations in areas experiencing the brunt of climate change with additional resources to address issues like air quality, water preservation and renewable energy access.
  • Our research shows, 75% of companies think technology will play a key role in their ability to reach sustainability goals: Our recent Google Cloud survey of nearly 1,500 executives across 16 countries found that sustainability tops business priorities, but few business leaders know how to begin or measure impact.
  • Helping build a free carbon calculator for businesses: For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) finding the resources to measure and manage emissions is challenging. We partnered with the Sweden-based company Normative to provide funding and support to develop a free Business Carbon Calculator that is now available through the UN Race to Zero backed SME Climate Hub.

Helping everyone make more sustainable choices

Individuals are also looking for ways to take care of the planet. We’ve been looking at building more ways for our products to give people access to the information and tools needed to make more sustainable choices.

Today, when you go to Google.com, you’ll see timelapse imagery from Google Earth Timelapse and other environmental organizations that illustrates the effects of climate change. This is part of our ongoing efforts to spotlight the impact of climate disasters and help people learn what actions they can take to minimize the effects. Last October, we partnered with the United Nations to make it easier for people to find climate change information. When you search for ‘climate change’ in certain languages, you’ll see information panels and visuals on the causes and effects of climate change and individual actions they can take to live more sustainably. This was already available in English, French and Spanish, and today we expanded to include Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese.

Here are more ways our products are helping people make sustainable choices:

  • Saving energy with Nest: Since Nest launched its first smart thermostat over ten years ago, it has helped people save nearly 100 billion kilowatt-hours of energy — that’s enough energy to light up the entire planet for ten days! Now compatible Nest thermostats can do even more with Nest Renew, a thermostat service announced last year in the U.S. When Nest Renew customers take actions at home that save energy, they earn ‘Leafs’. Once customers reach Leaf milestones, they can vote to direct funds to one of our Energy Impact Program partners, Elevate and GRID Alternatives. These funds have gone toward energy-efficient upgrades to affordable housing in Chicago and the expansion of solar installation programs in California. Nest Renew is currently available in early preview, sign up to join the waitlist.
  • More sustainable transportation options: Over ten years ago, cycling directions came to Google Maps. Today, it’s available in over 30 countries. In 2021 alone we added over 170,000 kilometers of bike lanes and bikeable roads, bringing more options to people looking for sustainable transportation alternatives.

Building a carbon-free future at Google

Lastly, we’ve always believed that to enable others we need to be leaders in the way we address our impact on the planet. In October, we set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain, including our consumer hardware products, by 2030. We aim to reduce the majority of our emissions (versus our 2019 baseline) before 2030, and plan to invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our remaining emissions.

We’ve recently shared more on how we’re driving toward net zero:

  • 24/7 carbon-free energy priorities: For emissions associated with powering our data centers and offices, we have an ambitious goal to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. This will require new technology to help with grid decarbonization, like our first-ever battery-based system for backup power at a hyperscale data center that is now operational in Belgium. Additionally, governments will need policies that speed up the transition to clean energy. Last week, we published a roadmap outlining policy priorities ​​that accelerate the decarbonization of electricity grids across the world and our commitment to advancing them.
  • Investing in carbon removals and carbon markets innovation: Beyond our value chain, we’ll build on our leadership in high-impact methane reduction and destruction projects. We’ll also invest in emerging companies developing technology-based and nature-based carbon removal solutions, like our recent $200 million limited partnership in Frontier. And we will help strengthen carbon markets through our Google.org contribution to Gold Standard’s digitization efforts and our $2 million contribution to the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets.

We all have to act now and act together if we’re going to avert the worst effects of climate change. At Google, one of the most powerful things we can do is build technology that allows us, partners and individuals to take meaningful action. We plan to continue this critical work and do what we can to protect the planet.

Data Commons: Making sustainability data accessible

At Google, we believe that giving everyone easy access to data can be revolutionary — especially when it comes to solving the world’s most pressing problems like climate change.

Take Google Maps for example. Before Google Maps, information — like satellite imagery, maps of roads and information about businesses — was found in different places. Google Maps brings all this helpful information together, so people can use it not only to navigate and explore the world with ease, but also to find solutions to problems facing their communities. We’ve seen people use Google Maps to help do everything from giving communities access to emergency food services to fighting the opioid crisis by highlighting drug drop-off centers.

Despite the critical urgency to combat the effects of climate change, finding data around sustainability is where mapping data was 15 years ago. It’s fragmented across thousands of silos, in a cacophony of schemas, and across a multitude of databases. In 2017, we started the Data Commons project to organize all this data to create standardized, universal access for consumers, journalists, policymakers and researchers. Today, Data Commons is one of the world's largest Knowledge Graphs on sustainability, spanning more than 100 new sources of data about climate, health, food, crops, shelter, emissions and more.

The graph contains nearly 3 billion time series across over 100,000 variables about 2.9 million places. Anyone can access, explore and understand this data using Google Search or our free dashboards and visualization tools. Or they can use our open and free APIs to build new tools based on this data. For enterprise customers, this data is available via Data Commons on the BigQuery Analytics Hub.

Illustration showing connecting dots and arrows that represent the data sources — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Census Bureau, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, World Bank and India Water Resources Information System.

The Data Commons Knowledge Graph is a single knowledge graph that includes more than 100 sources of sustainability data and more.

Connecting the dots on climate data

The effects of climate change are going to worsen food insecurity, health outcomes, economic inequities and other social issues. There is a dire need to create data-driven solutions that can mitigate these effects so we can take collective action. We’re working closely with the broader community — including universities, nonprofits and researchers — to use Data Commons to uncover insights and create solutions. Take a look at some of the work being done:

  • Temperature and health: Professor Arun Majumdar of Stanford University, who was also the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), is using Data Commons to look at the intersection of temperature and human health. When humidity and temperature reach a critical threshold, the human body can no longer regulate its temperature. Arun and his team are identifying which places will reach this critical threshold first. With this information, local governments can take proactive steps to mitigate these effects, like building infrastructure that provides cooling to communities.
  • Water for everyone: Professor Balaraman Ravindran of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras is working with Data Commons to add India-based data on water quality. With this data, communities can get a better understanding of water use, quality, availability and more.
  • Understanding food scarcity challenges: Feeding America is a nationwide network of 200 member food banks serving tens of millions of people in need in the United States. Data from their annual Map the Meal Gap studyis accessible in Feeding America Data Commons so anyone can explore food security and how it intersects with variables like health, climate and education. For Feeding America, this data allows them to quickly identify U.S. locations where food insecurity is most exacerbated by other root causes of disparities and hardship.

Our quest to organize the world’s sustainability information

Climate change is a defining crisis of our time, but together we have the potential to curb its effects. At Google one of the ways we can continue to contribute to solving it is through our mission to organize information and make it easily accessible. Data Commons’ data and code is open source so anyone can use it, and it’s built collaboratively with the global community. Join us in using Data Commons to tackle climate change, and see other progress we’ve made toward the sustainability commitments we made as part of our third decade of climate action.

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Our third decade of climate action: Realizing a carbon-free future

Sustainability has been a core value for Google since our founding. Now we're going further to help build a carbon-free future for everyone.

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Beta Channel Update for ChromeOS

The Beta channel is being updated to 101.0.4951.41 (Platform version: 14588.67.0) for most ChromeOS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our forum or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue...’ in the Chrome menu (3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser).

Matt Nelson,
Google ChromeOS

Hidden Interfaces for Ambient Computing

Posted by Alex Olwal, Research Scientist, Google Augmented Reality and Artem Dementyev, Hardware Engineer, Google Research

As consumer electronics and internet-connected appliances are becoming more common, homes are beginning to embrace various types of connected devices that offer functionality like music control, voice assistance, and home automation. A graceful integration of devices requires adaptation to existing aesthetics and user styles rather than simply adding screens, which can easily disrupt a visual space, especially when they become monolithic surfaces or black screens when powered down or not actively used. Thus there is an increasing desire to create connected ambient computing devices and appliances that can preserve the aesthetics of everyday materials, while providing on-demand access to interaction and digital displays.

Illustration of how hidden interfaces can appear and disappear in everyday surfaces, such as a mirror or the wood paneling of a home appliance.

In “Hidden Interfaces for Ambient Computing: Enabling Interaction in Everyday Materials through High-Brightness Visuals on Low-Cost Matrix Displays”, presented at ACM CHI 2022, we describe an interface technology that is designed to be embedded underneath materials and our vision of how such technology can co-exist with everyday materials and aesthetics. This technology makes it possible to have high-brightness, low-cost displays appear from underneath materials such as textile, wood veneer, acrylic or one-way mirrors, for on-demand touch-based interaction.

Hidden interface prototypes demonstrate bright and expressive rendering underneath everyday materials. From left to right: thermostat under textile, a scalable clock under wood veneer, and a caller ID display and a zooming countdown under mirrored surfaces.

Parallel Rendering: Boosting PMOLED Brightness for Ambient Computing
While many of today’s consumer devices employ active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays, their cost and manufacturing complexity is prohibitive for ambient computing. Yet other display technologies, such as E-ink and LCD, do not have sufficient brightness to penetrate materials.

To address this gap, we explore the potential of passive-matrix OLEDs (PMOLEDs), which are based on a simple design that significantly reduces cost and complexity. However, PMOLEDs typically use scanline rendering, where active display driver circuitry sequentially activates one row at a time, a process that limits display brightness and introduces flicker.

Instead, we propose a system that uses parallel rendering, where as many rows as possible are activated simultaneously in each operation by grouping rectilinear shapes of horizontal and vertical lines. For example, a square can be shown with just two operations, in contrast to traditional scanline rendering that needs as many operations as there are rows. With fewer operations, parallel rendering can output significantly more light in each instant to boost brightness and eliminate flicker. The technique is not strictly limited to lines and rectangles even if that is where we see the most dramatic performance increase. For example, one could add additional rendering steps for antialiasing (i.e., smoothing of) non-rectilinear content.

Illustration of scanline rendering (top) and parallel rendering (bottom) operations of an unfilled rectangle. Parallel rendering achieves bright, flicker-free graphics by simultaneously activating multiple rows.

Rendering User Interfaces and Text
We show that hidden interfaces can be used to create dynamic and expressive interactions. With a set of fundamental UI elements such as buttons, switches, sliders, and cursors, each interface can provide different basic controls, such as light switches, volume controls and thermostats. We created a scalable font (i.e., a set of numbers and letters) that is designed for efficient rendering in just a few operations. While we currently exclude letters “k, z, x” with their diagonal lines, they could be supported with additional operations. The per-frame-control of font properties coupled with the high frame rate of the display enables very fluid animations — this capability greatly expands the expressivity of the rectilinear graphics far beyond what is possible on fixed 7-segment LED displays.

In this work, we demonstrate various examples, such as a scalable clock, a caller ID display, a zooming countdown timer, and a music visualizer.

Realizing Hidden Interfaces with Interactive Hardware
To implement proof-of-concept hidden interfaces, we use a PMOLED display with 128×96 resolution that has all row and column drivers routed to a connector for direct access. We use a custom printed circuit board (PCB) with fourteen 16-channel digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to directly interface those 224 lines from a Raspberry Pi 3 A+. The touch interaction is enabled by a ring-shaped PCB surrounding the display with 12 electrodes arranged in arc segments.

Comparison to Existing Technologies
We compared the brightness of our parallel rendering to both the scanline on the same PMOLED and a small and large state-of-the-art AMOLED. We tested brightness through six common materials, such as wood and plastic. The material thickness ranged from 0.2 mm for the one-way mirror film to 1.6 mm for basswood. We measured brightness in lux (lx = light intensity as perceived by the human eye) using a light meter near the display. The environmental light was kept dim, slightly above the light meter’s minimum sensitivity. For simple rectangular shapes, we observed 5–40x brightness increase for the PMOLED in comparison to the AMOLED. The exception was the thick basswood, which didn’t let much light through for any rendering technology.

Example showing performance difference between parallel rendering on the PMOLED (this work) and a similarly sized modern 1.4″ AMOLED.

To validate the findings from our technical characterization with more realistic and complex content, we evaluate the number “2”, a grid of checkboxes, three progress bars, and the text “Good Life”. For this more complex content, we observed a 3.6–9.3x brightness improvement. These results suggest that our approach of parallel rendering on PMOLED enables display through several materials, and outperforms common state-of-the-art AMOLED displays, which seem to not be usable for the tested scenarios.

Brightness experiments with additional shapes that require different numbers of operations (ops). Measurements are shown in comparison to large state-of-the-art AMOLED displays.

What's Next?
In this work, we enabled hidden interfaces that can be embedded in traditional materials and appear on demand. Our lab evaluation suggests unmet opportunities to introduce hidden displays with simple, yet expressive, dynamic and interactive UI elements and text in traditional materials, especially wood and mirror, to blend into people’s homes.

In the future, we hope to investigate more advanced parallel rendering techniques, using algorithms that could also support images and complex vector graphics. Furthermore, we plan to explore efficient hardware designs. For example, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) could enable an inexpensive and small display controller with parallel rendering instead of a large array of DACs. Finally, longitudinal deployment would enable us to go deeper into understanding user adoption and behavior with hidden interfaces.

Hidden interfaces demonstrate how control and feedback surfaces of smart devices and appliances could visually disappear when not in use and then appear when in the user's proximity or touch. We hope this direction will encourage the community to consider other approaches and scenarios where technology can fade into the background for a more harmonious coexistence with traditional materials and human environments.

Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank Ali Rahimi and Roman Lewkow for the collaboration, including providing the enabling technology. We also thank Olivier Bau, Aaron Soloway, Mayur Panchal and Sukhraj Hothi for their prototyping and fabrication contributions. We thank Michelle Chang and Mark Zarich for visual designs, illustrations and presentation support. We thank Google ATAP and the Google Interaction Lab for their support of the project. Finally, we thank Sarah Sterman and Mathieu Le Goc for helpful discussions and suggestions.

Source: Google AI Blog


Admins can now specify how individual Android apps update within the Admin console

What’s changing 

Google Workspace admins can now specify how Android apps update, giving them greater control over how Android apps are deployed within their fleet. Specifically, admins can specify whether apps are updated right away or postponed. Further, admins can set these policies on a group level within their organization. See below for more information. 



Who’s impacted 

Admins 

Why it’s important 

Previously, the default behavior for app updates in managed Google Play was contingent on the device being connected to a Wi-Fi network, to be charging, and not being actively used. This behavior is not always suited to the needs of our customers and admins need more granular control over how apps are updated. 

With this update, Admins can now set specific criteria for when Managed Play apps update: 
  • High priority mode: the app is updated immediately after the developer publishes a new version. Note that for high priority, app updates will also still be issued when the default update criteria is met. 
  • Postponed mode: the app will not be automatically updated during the 90 days after a new version is released. After this 90-day period, the newly available version of the app is automatically installed when a device is connected to Wi-Fi, charging, and the app is not in use. Note: users can still manually update the app via the Play Store. 

Additionally, Admins can apply these configurations on a Group level within their organization, giving admins even greater granular control. 

Getting started 


Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Education Plus, Frontline, legacy G Suite Business and Basic, and Cloud Identity premium customers.
  • Not available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Essentials, Nonprofits customers, and Cloud Identity Premium customers 

Resources 

Create dynamic groups by querying custom user attributes

Quick summary 

Dynamic groups can now be defined by querying custom user attributes, allowing for more definitive group definitions based on user directory information. Admins can define memberships using a variety of conditions, such as a users: 
  • Country 
  • Domain 
  • Department 
  • Language and more. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now for all users. 

Availability 

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

Resources 

Exploring accessibility through community with Pescara’s Google Developer Group

Posted by Alessandro Palmieri, Regional Lead, Europe, Google Developer Groups

Blue banner with text that reads Exploring accessibility through community in GDG Pescara. Includes an image of two men giving standing in front of a projector screen

You never quite know exactly how someone else experiences the world - but making an effort to connect and understand others remains a hallmark of a strong community. In November 2019, Google Developer Group Pescara invited backend developer Filippo Tenaglia to speak at a local DevFest program, as part of the global developer event. The group turned the lights down and connected Filippo’s PC to the room’s speakers, and Filippo told attendees about his life as a visually impaired developer. He let them hear what he hears when he works with the code and let them hear the different speech synthesizers he uses: the one he uses to browse on the Internet, as well as the one that he uses to read source code, that reads any punctuation character.

One attendee asked Filippo how many lines of code he’s able to remember without seeing them, and Filippo answered, “I have to remember the whole block. I can’t see the code, so I memorize it. Usually, I can remember 20, even 30 lines of code.” The attendee replied, “you’re a dragon,” alluding to folklore that the mystical creatures have strong memories. Filippo laughed, and his colleague, Gregorio Palama, leader of GDG Pescara, says he got goosebumps.

Gregorio met Filippo when the two worked together at an IT consultancy. Filippo brought his guide dog Lila to work and impressed Gregario with his remarkable ability to memorize 20-30 lines of code at a time. Filippo used assistive technology, like speech synthesizers and screen readers, as well as his extraordinary memorization ability, to code. Through his friendship with Filippo, Gregorio came to understand the importance of accessibility.

Gregorio uses his Google Developer Group (GDG) Pescara community, in a small city in the central part of Italy, to advocate for people with disabilities and educate other developers about the technical tools needed to make programming, websites, and software truly accessible for the visually impaired.

Leveraging tools to stay connected

Developers with visual impairments similar to Fillipo can leverage assistive technology in Chrome like screen readers and magnifiers. When browsing the web using various accessibility extensions, there are ways for people with visual impairments to make the browser more accessible, without installing external software.

Through their friendship, Filippo continued to educate Gregorio about accessibility when he called Gregorio to volunteer for more GDG Pescara events in Italy. Filippo explained that he was calling because the group’s community messaging platform and application, where they post calls for volunteers and share event details, isn’t accessible, so Fialippo can’t see the posted information and needs to use a different method of staying up to date on GDG activities.

Using community to share the importance of accessibility

GDG Pescara plans to host a DevFest focused accessibility and other selected topics. The organizers are thinking of having a hackathon that could expose developers to Google’s accessibility tools, like the ChromeVox screen reader, which developers can use to test the accessibility of their web apps, or Chrome’s documentation on designing accessible extensions. With this community-led programming, Gregorio and his team hope to inspire other developers to build new accessibility tools, like a better community platform.

Through his friendship with Filippo, Gregorio learned the importance of accessibility. Now, he is using his GDG community and a suite of tools to help educate about accessibility and advocate for people with disabilities.

If you’re inspired to lead fellow developers into an exploration of accessibility in technology, we encourage you to join a GDG near you, or consider leading a GDG chapter. You can learn more about Google’s accessibility initiatives and developer tools here and check out an upcoming GDG community accessibility awareness event here.

Dev Channel Update for Desktop

 The Dev channel has been updated to 102.0.5005.12 for Linux, Mac and 102.0.5005.12/13 for Windows

A partial list of changes is available in the 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.

Srinivas Sista

Google Chrome

Resilience tips from a Google expert

At Google, we define resilience as your ability to respond to and recover from stress. There’s maybe no time where this is more relevant than during a pandemic. Lauren Whitt, Google’s Head of Resilience, and her team spend their days helping Googlers perform at their best.

This week, to help even more people build their resilience, Lauren and her team launched a new podcast series that anyone can listen to and learn from. The series helps uncover the science behind resilience and high performance, and contains strategies from a wide array of experts to help listeners with whatever challenges they may be facing. We chatted with Lauren about her role, the podcast and expert tips for staying resilient during times of uncertainty.

How would you describe your job at a dinner party?

I lead Google’s Global Resilience program. Our team, including coaches based around the world, are focused on helping Googlers reach peak mental performance, maintain their wellbeing and cope with work-related stress. Some ways we do this are through internal speaker series, individual consultations and training programs.

What’s one thing that you want people to know about stress and resilience?

Stress is an inevitable aspect of our lives. Extreme levels of stress can lead us to feel overwhelmed and exhausted, but when managed appropriately, moderate stress can actually motivate us to perform at our best.. There are easy ways we can manage stress more effectively. For example, we know that self-awareness is the foundation of behavior change, so one thing we created on our team is what we call the “T.E.A check-in” — as a way for individuals and teams to reflect on their thoughts (T), energy (E) and attention (A).

How do you deal with stress in your own life?

For me, enjoying the outdoors plays a huge role in stress management. When the pandemic first started, my family and I relocated to a condo in a Florida Panhandle beach town. It has really provided me with a fresh perspective. Many days, my mornings begin with a walk on the beach listening to a podcast and taking in fresh air. In the evenings, when my husband arrives home from work, we close our laptops and shift to family time. We’ll end our days with a walk on the beach or by watching the sunset.

You just launched a new podcast on resilience. What can you tell us about it?

This project has been in the works for a while, and we’re thrilled to finally share it with the world. We’ve paired leading neuroscientists and psychologists with mental performance coaches to uncover the science behind resilience and high performance. Each episode — there are four in total — is filled with strategies that listeners can put into place right now to help them with whatever challenges they may be facing.

What are some of your favorite tips from the podcast?

There are so many! One I really love is about how fresh starts are one of the best times for setting new goals. This one is particularly timely as many Googlers just started their hybrid work weeks earlier this month. Many people naturally think about this on January 1 and create resolutions each year, but there are many other moments that provide a fresh start – such as the start of a new week, the start of a new month, the celebration of a birthday or the start of a season. Because we don’t think about time linearly, we create these chapters in our life stories. And when we feel we’re closing one chapter and opening another, we feel a renewed optimism about what we can achieve.

What are you hoping listeners take away?

I hope the podcast helps spark new conversations about how to prepare for and thrive in a hybrid work environment. As we move forward in our own hybrid workplace, there are new skills we need to put in place to manage the next era of workplace success. The podcast combines experts discussing the science and coaches who share the practical applications of these initiatives.

To listen to the podcast, subscribe via Resilience at Google.

Read Article

Tips from Google’s resilience expert on avoiding burnout

Lauren Whitt, Head of Global Resilience at Google, shares what resilience means, why it’s important to develop it and a few ways you can ...

Read Article

New cookie choices in Europe

If you’ve visited a website in Europe, chances are you’ve seen a cookie consent banner. Cookies help sites remember information about your visit, so they can do things like display text in your preferred language, make sure you’re a real user and not a pesky bot, or estimate whether or not an ad campaign is working.

In the past year, regulators who interpret European laws requiring these banners, including data protection authorities in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the U.K., have updated their guidance for compliance. We’re committed to meeting the standards of that updated guidance and have been working with a number of these authorities.

Based on these conversations and specific direction from France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), we have now completed a full redesign of our approach, including changes to the infrastructure we use to handle cookies.

A box that reads, “Before you continue to YouTube,” explains cookies, and asks you to “Reject all” or “Accept all” with one click

Our new cookie banners began rolling out earlier this month on YouTube in France and will soon be coming to all Google users in Europe

Soon, anyone visiting Search and YouTube in Europe while signed out or in Incognito Mode will see a new cookie consent choice. This update, which began rolling out earlier this month on YouTube, will provide you with equal “Reject all” and “Accept all” buttons on the first screen in your preferred language. (You can also still choose to customize your choice in more detail with “More options.”)

We’ve kicked off the launch in France and will be extending this experience across the rest of the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland. Before long, users in the region will have a new cookie choice — one that can be accepted or rejected with a single click.

Not just a new button

This update meant we needed to re-engineer the way cookies work on Google sites, and to make deep, coordinated changes to critical Google infrastructure. Moreover, we knew that these changes would impact not only Search and YouTube, but also the sites and content creators who use them to help grow their businesses and make a living.

We believe this update responds to updated regulatory guidance and is aligned with our broader goal of helping build a more sustainable future for the web. We’ve committed to building new privacy-preserving technologies in the Privacy Sandbox for the same reason. We believe it is possible both to protect people’s privacy online and to give companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses.