Posted by Sean Falconer, Staff Developer Relations Engineer Sean Falconer
In this article, I’ll give a brief overview of Business Messages, how to get started developing with the platform, and then walkthrough how to set up an AI-powered conversion using the Bot-in-a-Box feature.
Let’s get started!
What is Google's Business Messages?
Business Messages is a mobile conversational channel that combines entry points from Google Maps, Search, and brand websites to create rich, asynchronous messaging experiences.
As shown in the example image below, I’ve searched “Bridgepoint Runners” and the results point me to a local Bridgepoint Runners store, which contains buttons to call, get directions, or go to their website. Since Bridgepoint Runners is enabled for Business Messages, I also see a Chat button, which when tapped opens a conversation with Bridgepoint Runners. In the conversation, the business can automatically answer my questions using AI-powered bots as well as live agents.
Example of Business Messages chat entry point for Bridgepoint Runners
In this simple example, Bridgepoint Runners represents a local business, but Business Messages also works for web-based businesses. Business Messages supports rich conversational features like suggested replies, suggested actions, rich cards, carousels, and images so that you can create complex and feature-rich conversational experiences to support a wide range of customer user journeys.
How do I get started?
To get started with Business Messages, you can register as a development partner on our developer website. You can also get up and running quickly by following our quickstart guide.
Once you’ve worked your way through the quickstart, you’ll have registered a Google Cloud Project and that project will have two APIs enabled, the Business Communications API and Business Messages API.
The Business Communications API is an API for creating and managing business experiences for the Business Messages platform while the Business Messages API is an API for sending and receiving messages to and from users on behalf of a business. Additionally, you’ll have access to the Business Communications Developer Console, which is a web-based tool for creating and managing business experiences on the Business Messages platform. It provides the same functionality as the Business Communications API, but is a faster and more convenient way to get started.
Additionally, after the quickstart, you’ll have configured a webhook and created your first Business Messages agent. An agent is a conversational representation of a brand. Agents include properties like the brand’s logo, the agent’s display name, the welcome message that greets a user, and more that define how the conversation will look and where the chat button will show up once launched.
The quickstart will have you deploy code to Google App Engine and the life of a message for your Echo Bot sample will look something like the image below.
Life of a Business Messages message
After creating an agent on behalf of a business, the chat button isn’t immediately available to Google Search and Maps users. All agents must go through a verification and launch process before the chat button will be shown for businesses in Search and Maps. You can see the full lifecycle from creation to launch of an agent here.
Even without launching an agent, you can test the message flow by using the test URLs from a mobile device that are autogenerated when you create the agent. The test URLs for an agent can be copied or sent to your email from within the Business Communications Developer Console and are also available as a property of the agent if you’re using the API.
When you navigate to the test URL, the conversation with your agent will automatically open. This mimics the experience that a user would see when tapping on a chat button for a launched Business Messages agent.
Agent information editor for a Business Messages agent
AI-powered conversation with Bot-in-a-Box
Business Messages’s Bot-in-a-Box makes getting started with conversational AI easy. Bot-in-a-Box takes advantage of Google AI tools like Dialogflow to easily convert an existing FAQ into an automated Business Messages solution. Within minutes, you could launch a lifelike virtual agent that provides relevant responses to the most common questions a business receives from customers.
FAQ-powered automated conversations
Additionally, you can use Dialogflow’s intents to create and support complex automated user journeys, like appointment booking, shopping, order lookup, and lead capture while taking advantage of Business Messages’s rich features.
Let’s take a look at an example.
Creating a Business Messages Helper bot
For this example, I’m going to create a helper bot that can answer questions about Business Messages. I’m going to create a new Business Messages agent using the Business Communications Developer Console, use the native Bot-in-a-Box feature to automate the conversation powered by an FAQ and Dialogflow, and finally add a custom intent to support an about this bot input.
To get started, since I’m already registered for Business Messages, I’m going to go to the Business Communications Developer Console and create a new agent.
Once the agent is created, I can select the agent to see additional details and access the various configuration options.
Create an agent dialog
Overview of a newly created Business Messages agent
Before setting up my Bot-in-a-Box experience, I want to make sure my agent is properly configured to greet new users. I click on Agent Information and from here I can set a welcome message and up to 5 conversation starters that help the user understand how to interact with the automated agent.
Agent information editor for a Business Messages agent
If I send myself the test URL and open the conversation on my phone, I’ll see that the Helper Bot has the greeting I configured and three conversation starters. Since I haven’t configured Bot-in-a-Box or a webhook to respond to user messages, if I send a message to the bot, nothing will happen.
First time experience with the Business Messages Helper Bot
Now that I have the basics setup, I’m going to click on the Integrations menu item in the developer console and configure Bot-in-a-Box via Dialogflow.
Setting up Bot-in-a-Box
The first step to setting up Bot-in-a-Box is to enable the Dialogflow integration. Currently, Bot-in-a-Box only supports the Dialogflow Essentials (ES) version of Dialogflow. However, you can integrate with Dialogflow Customer Experience (CX) by calling the CX APIs directly from a configured Business Messages webhook and programming the conversion to and from the Business Messages APIs.
From the Integrations section of the console, I click Enable integration. I am prompted to either create a new Dialogflow project or connect to an existing one. I’ve already created a Dialogflow project, so I choose to connect to an existing project and then I follow the prompts to set up the authentication between my Business Messages agent and the Dialogflow project.
Once the authentication is complete, I see an updated integration view like the one below. Next I want to Create a knowledge base and add an FAQ document. Behind the scenes, Dialogflow will use machine learning to process the document and recognize questions similar to what exists in the FAQ.
Enabling the Dialogflow integration
The document can be a URL pointing to an existing FAQ for a business or if you don’t have one, you can create an FAQ using Google Sheets, download it as a CSV, and then upload the CSV to initialize Bot-in-a-Box. For the purposes of this example, I created an FAQ as shown in the document below and uploaded it to Bot-in-a-Box.
Example FAQ sheet created for Business Messages
I downloaded this Sheet as a CSV and uploaded it as the initial data set for Bot-in-a-Box to train with.
Upload an FAQ as training data for Bot-in-a-Box
Now that I have Bot-in-a-Box configured, I go back to the conversation I started with the Business Messages Helper Bot on my phone and try asking a question. The Business Messages agent is able to respond immediately with a matching answer pulled from the FAQ document I created.
First time experience with the Business Messages Helper Bot
With Bot-in-a-Box’s FAQ support, within just a few minutes, without writing any code, I was able to create a sophisticated digital agent that can answer common questions about Business Messages.
Adding in a custom intent
As a final step, we are going to add a custom intent to the Dialogflow project we set up that can respond with rich content when someone taps on the “About this bot” suggestion or enters a similar question in the conversation.
From the Integrations section of the Business Communications Developer Console, I click on View agent, which takes me into Dialogflow ES. I click on the Intents menu item, create a new intent called “About this bot”, enter a few training phrases that represent expressions that should match this intent, and a text response.
Example of creating a custom payload to respond with a Business Messages rich card
Back in my conversation with the helper bot, I enter a message that should match this intent: “Who made this bot?”. Even though this phrase wasn’t explicitly part of the training phrases, my agent should match the intent and produce the response I configured.
Example text-based response from a custom intent
In this example, I’m responding with a simple text message, but what if I want to take advantage of Business Messages’s rich message support and respond with something like a rich card? I can do this by using Dialogflow’s custom payload option and use a valid Business Messages rich card payload in the response to create the card.
Example of creating a custom payload to respond with a Business Messages rich card
After creating the JSON structure for a card, I click Save and re-enter the chat on my phone asking “Who made this bot?” again and see the updated response.
Example rich card response form Helper Bot
Final thoughts
Google’s Business Messages is about enabling all businesses to welcome their customers and open a conversation, where and when they need it, as naturally as when a customer enters a store. Dialogflow is Google’s natural language understanding tool that processes user input, maps it to known intents, and responds with appropriate replies.
With Bot-in-a-Box, you can quickly combine the power of Business Messages that turns search queries into conversations, and Dialogflow to provide a turnkey solution to automate customer interactions with a business.
In this article, I showed how to use an FAQ to get up and running with Business Messages quickly and even create custom intents that can respond with rich responses to user inquiries, all without writing a single line of code. This no-code solution can easily be extended using Dialogflow’s fulfillment feature to pull in business information from a database or API, allowing you to support even more complex user journeys.
To learn more about Business Messages, check out our developer website and join our community. You can also check out the Business Messages Helper Bot powered by this technology available in our developer support section here.
I can’t wait to see what you build!
Source: Google Developers Blog
#Android Developer Summit: 3 things to know for Large Screens on Android!
Posted by Clara Bayarri, Engineering Manager
This year’s Android Dev Summit brought a lot of updates related to Large Screen development for Android, the 12L feature drop on foldables and tablets - a set of features optimising Android 12 for large screens, better developer tools and updates to Google Play purpose-built for large screens. Here are the top 3 things you should know:
#1: The 12L feature drop for large screens
12L makes Android 12 even better on Large Screen devices, with a bunch of new refined UI across surfaces such as notifications and the lock screen. The most important announcements for developers included
- A renewed emphasis on multitasking. This means all apps can now enter split screen mode, regardless of whether they are resizeable or not.
- New improvements to compatibility mode
- New Activity Embedding APIs that allow you to show multiple activities side by side, making it easier to build large screen optimized layouts in existing apps
To find out more about what’s new, check out the What’s new for large screens and foldables video and developer.android.com/12L .
#2: Making it easier to build for Large Screens
Android has supported Large Screens for a long time, but we announced several new tools to help you scale up your app’s UI to larger form factors.
- New Material Design Guidance targeted at large screens, including a definition of common layout patterns prevalent in the ecosystem to help inspire your app’s design
- Window Size Classes, a new framework of breakpoints designed to represent the most common form factors in the ecosystem you should design and develop for
- Updates to SlidingPaneLayout, the View component for 2 pane layouts, to support Navigation
- New Compose APIs that make developing adaptive and responsive UI very simple, including Navigation Rail support
- Android Studio reference devices, a new set of device profiles that represent the widest range possible of devices in the ecosystem to test for
- Visual Lint brought to Android Studio Layout Validation to detect issues with large screen layouts
- A brand new Resizeable Emulator that can quickly toggle between the reference devices
Learn more about all these items in the Building Android UIs for Any Screen Size and Design beautiful apps on foldables and large screens talks, and check out the latest Large Screen guide and Build adaptive layouts in Compose guide for more. You can also check out Best practices for video apps on foldable devices and Spotify Across Screens for examples on how apps are making this journey.
#3: Google Play updates for Large Screens
To help users find the best apps on tablets, foldables and ChromeOS devices, we’ve got new changes in Play to recommend apps optimized for the large screen. This includes new checks to assess app quality, so we can feature large screen optimized apps and update search rankings to show the best possible apps for these devices. We will also be introducing large screen specific app ratings, so users will be able to rate how your app works on their large screen devices.
You can find all of this year’s Android Dev Summit talks related to Large Screens in this playlist, and the full list of announcements for Large Screens in our blog post.
Source: Android Developers Blog
Two professors are leveling the field in computing research
Editor’s note: This guest post is by Professors Maria Gini and Shana Watters from the University of Minnesota.
Research is about opening up new worlds and systematically answering questions about their possibilities. But access to research opportunities, including computer science (CS) research, is not equitable: In Canada and the United States in 2020, resident students who identified as Black, Indigenous, Latino, women and intersections of these identities made up only 12.1% of CS Ph.D. enrollments. As educators, we felt compelled to address this inequity. We learned about Google’s exploreCSR program in 2018, and it’s helped us make important progress in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
exploreCSR provides faculty with funding, community, evaluation and connections to Google researchers in order to introduce students to the world of CS research. We used our first two years of exploreCSR funding to create content for an undergraduate research course and pilot it in weekend workshops. We started with the belief that all students are capable of executing research, but needed guidance on how to get started. But once we began the workshops, we realized that we needed to first establish a foundation of what research is and how it’s done. That way, students could move from sheer curiosity to hands-on practice. We also saw a need to recognize their commitment to this work through official academic credit.
Based on our learnings from the workshops, we offered a one-credit class in 2021 called “Introduction to Undergraduate Research in Computer Science.” The course helped students develop research skills like identifying and formulating research problems, reading research papers and analyzing data. Faculty mentors from a variety of backgrounds discussed their research, and mentors from Google engaged with the students through talks, panels and mock interviews. At the end of the semester, students understood how to network, present their knowledge and develop game plans to reach their computing research goals.
Our inaugural class included 45 students with a diverse range of identities, some of whom are now doing research with faculty, receiving undergraduate research funds and completing research internships. Our students reflected that having access to researchers in both academia and the tech industry opened up new ways of thinking about research. “Learning that it’s okay to change your academic and career plans really calmed some of the worries I have,” one student shared. Another learned the value of taking risks: “If you get stuck on a problem, try to jump out of the box to view it, and you might find brand new solutions which you had never imagined.”
Our goal from the start was to prepare the next generation of researchers, including many students historically marginalized in computing. And we’re still making progress. The support we received from exploreCSR and the program’s mentors helped make our first class a rewarding learning experience for both the students and instructors. Moving forward, we will work towards improving the course based on student feedback, and developing strong partnerships with local companies. And we're proud that the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering has committed to offer "Introduction to Undergraduate Research in Computer Science" as an annual course.
As the scientist Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Our students are going to explore those incredible “somethings” with purpose and direction. We look forward to their accomplishments!
Visit our websiteto learn more about exploreCSR and meet the 35 institutionsin our 2021 cycle.
Source: The Official Google Blog
10 ways Google Assistant can help you during the holidays
As fun as the holidays can be, they’re also filled with lots of to-do lists, preparation and planning. Before the hustle and bustle of the season begins, we wanted to share a few ways you can use Google Assistant to stay on top of things and do what matters most — spending quality time with family and friends.
- Get together over a good meal made easy with hands-free help in the kitchen. Surprise your family and friends with a new dish or dessert or find inspiration by saying, “Hey Google, find me Thanksgiving recipes.”
- …And if you happen to come across a few new favorites, tap on that recipe and ask your Assistant to save it for you by saying “Hey Google, add to my cookbook.” Then when it comes time for a holiday feast, all your recent recipes will be waiting for you on your Smart Display and will show up when you say “Hey Google, show me my cookbook.” Once you've gathered your ingredients, select the recipe you want to cook and say “Hey Google, start cooking” to get step-by-step instructions on your Smart Display.
3. When the food is prepared and the table is set, let everyone know dinner is ready withBroadcast. Just say, “Hey Google, broadcast ‘dinner is ready.’”
4. How early is too early for festive music? The limit does not exist! And even if you don’t have something queued up, you can just say“Hey Google, play Christmas music.”
5. Want to avoid scrolling endlessly for gifts? Android users can use Assistant to browse shopping apps like Walmart with just their voice. If you have the Walmart app installed on your Android phone, try saying“Hey Google, search Walmart for bicycles.”
6. Avoid spending hours waiting on hold when you call to adjust travel plans or return a gift. Pixel users can take advantage of Hold For Me, where Google Assistant will wait on the line for you and let you know when a real person is ready to take your call.
7. Connect and feel close from anywhere with video calling. Make a group call with Duo supporting up to 32 people on your Nest Hub Max — or send a “happy holidays!” message using one of the fun AR effects on mobile devices. To start a Duo call, just say, “Hey Google, make a video call.”
8. Keep your family’s busy holiday schedule on track with Family Bell from Google. Say “Hey Google, set up a Family Bell” to be reminded with delightful sounds on your speakers or smart displays when it’s time to tackle important moments of your day, like holiday meals or volunteering at the local gift drive. And for routines that require a little extra work — like getting the kids to bed after a get together — create a Family Bell checklist on your Smart Display with get ready bells that remind them of key tasks to complete, like brushing their teeth and putting on pajamas.
9. Have some fun and create new memories with a hands-free family game night. Put your game face on and say, “Hey Google, let’s play a game.”
10. Spark some holiday magic with a story from Google. We’ve added a new interactive story from Grabbit, a twist on the classic fairytale, “Hansel and Gretel.” Play the story from either the perspective of Hansel and Gretel or the Witch, and decide how the story unfolds. Just say “Hey Google, talk to Twisted Hansel and Gretel” and let the adventure begin! More interactive stories from Grabbit like “Jungle Book,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Sherlock Holmes” will soon be available on your Google Nest smart display devices between now and the new year.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Helping fashion brands make more sustainable decisions
The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the global climate and ecological crisis — accounting for up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this impact occurs at the raw materials stage of the supply chain, like when cotton is farmed or trees are cut down to create viscose. But when brands source these materials, they often have little to no visibility on the environmental impact of them.
In 2019, we set out to create a tool that would give companies the data they need to make more responsible sourcing decisions. Today we’re announcing the first version of the Global Fibre Impact Explorer (GFIE), and we’re inviting other brands to get involved. The tool, which is built on Google Earth Engine and uses Google Cloud computing, assesses the environmental risk of different fibers across regions as it relates to environmental factors such as air pollution, biodiversity, climate and greenhouse gasses, forestry and water use.
With this tool, brands will easily be able to identify environmental risks across more than 20 fiber types — including natural, cellulosic and synthetics materials.The tool will also provide brands with recommendations for targeted and regionally specific risk reduction activities including opportunities to work with farmers, producers and communities, such as investing in regenerative agriculture practices
The GFIE dashboard where brands can upload their fiber portfolio data and get recommendations to reduce risk across key environmental categories.
Spooling it all together: Working with fashion brands and conservation experts
We worked with Stella McCartney, a luxury fashion brand and leader in sustainability, to understand the industry's needs and to test the platform. Using the tool alongside their existing sustainability efforts, Stella McCartney’s team was able to identify cotton sources in Turkey that were facing increased water and climate risks. This affirms the need for investing in local farming communities that focus on regenerative practices, such as water management and soil regeneration. Other brands and retailers — including Adidas, Allbirds, H&M Group and VF Corporation — have helped test and refine the tool to make sure it can be useful to everyone in the industry. And an external council of global experts have reviewed the GFIE methodology and data.
The GFIE was born out of a partnership between Google and the WWF, and is built to complement existing tools focused on industry impact and risk analysis. With the initial development phase complete, Google and WWF are now transitioning GFIE to Textile Exchange, a global non-profit focused on positively impacting climate through accelerating the use of preferred fibers across the global textile industry. As the official host of the GFIE, Textile Exchange will continue the development of the tool, onboard new brands and work towards an industry launch in 2022.
If you’re a part of a fashion brand or industry group and want access to this tool, please register your interest at globalfibreimpact.com.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Shop Black-owned with the #BlackOwnedFriday shoppable film
When I founded Nappy Boy Entertainment in 2005, I had no idea all the directions it would go. What started as a record label now includes a podcast, gaming and a book — I’m proud of this business. Along the way, I’ve developed a true passion for small businesses and I admire the hard work it takes to make them successful. I love doing whatever I can to support them.
So I was thrilled when Google reached out about the second annual Black-owned Friday. Last year, Google partnered with the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. to reimagine Black Friday as “Black-owned Friday” — a day to celebrate and support Black-owned businesses. This year, I’m proud to join Google and the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. for another year of encouraging shoppers to support Black-owned businesses.
And I was especially excited to write a new track to celebrate Black-owned businesses. We brought the track to life with a film directed by Daps, featuring me, Normani, Desi Banks, Tanerélle and actual business owners. The best part? The video is shoppable with more than 100 products from more than 50 Black-owned businesses. Check it out at g.co/blackownedfriday.
An important way to support Black-owned businesses this holiday season is to help make sure people can find them — and digital tools can help. According to a consumer survey that Google and the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. commissioned, 66% of consumers who actively support Black-owned businesses say they use digital tools to find them. If you own a business, one way to be sure you’re showing up for searches like “Black-owned shops near me” or “Black-owned restaurants near me” is to add the Black-owned business badge on Google Search, Maps and Shopping.
This holiday season — and throughout the year — search, shop and support Black-owned.
Source: The Official Google Blog
How early-stage news publishers achieve sustainability
In December 2020, the Google News Initiative and LION Publishers launched the first-ever GNI Startups Lab in North America. By March 2021, 10 early-stage publishers had been selected to partake in an intensive, six-month accelerator program, during which they received coaching and financial support to help their businesses become more sustainable.
Today, we’re sharing a comprehensive report on this cohort of the GNI Startups Lab which documents everything that we learned during our time together, including the new strategies that digital publishers are using to build their businesses and connect with their communities.
Over the course of the Lab, it became clear that sustainability for independent news businesses lies at the nexus of financial health, journalistic impact and operational resilience. Many of the participants made terrific strides in making their businesses more resilient for the long-term:
- Amy Duncan is the founder and publisher of the Indianola Independent Advocate (IAA) in Central Iowa. A former Des Moines Register executive, Amy focused on improving her bandwidth as a founder, which meant learning how to develop operational workflows so that she can expand her team. Taking the advice of her dedicated Startups Lab coach, Amy added two part-time employees to IAA’s payroll. Expanding her team freed up more of Amy’s time to make crucial improvements to IAA’s digital advertising system and to explore adding programmatic ads to the website. “Before this program I didn't realize, or accept, how much time I need to be spending on the business side. We'd been getting by on running subscription and revenue efforts when I felt like it, but I now know that I need to spend a large percentage of my time focused squarely on the business side.”
- Kara Meyberg Guzman has always been passionate about local news, even selling her car to help launch Santa Cruz Local in 2019. But it was not until recently that Kara realized the need to measure success beyond revenue and membership growth. Each team member now tracks their mental and emotional health and discusses the results at a weekly meeting. Measuring staff health led Santa Cruz Local to redistribute work among their team members and to implement a company retirement plan for full-time employees. “Through the GNI Startups Lab, I’ve learned that operational resilience — an ability for our team to work together to achieve shared goals, without burnout — is equally important,” Kara said. The Lab also helped Santa Cruz Local cultivate an experimentation mindset across all aspects of the organization, including implementing quarterly OKRs. “We learned how to divide tasks, build staff capacity, set measurable goals, track our progress, make room for small experiments, and say no to things that distract us from our purpose. Our team is so much stronger than we were a year ago.”
- Wausau Pilot & Review founder Shereen Siewert was concerned about the lack of news produced for and consumed by the large Hmong community in Wausau, Wisconsin. With support from her coach, Shereen developed an outreach strategy to help Wausau’s journalists to connect with the local Hmong community, including distributing surveys and in-person booths at local community events. Wausau grew their monthly non-English speaking audience by more than 20% during the Lab, and is building deeper connections with this historically underserved community. “Participating in the GNI Startups Lab was a game-changer for us. We left the program feeling much more confident about our sustainability and learned so much from our colleagues along the way.”
GNI Startups Lab's founder teams
We are grateful to the 10 participating publishers of the North American GNI Startups Lab, both for their deep engagement with the program and for so generously sharing their learnings with the wider digital news ecosystem. This body of knowledge is already helping to power ongoing GNI Startups Labs in Europe, Hispanoamérica and India, and we look forward to announcing additional installments of the program in 2022.
In addition to the Lab Report, today we’re also sharing the results from the GNI’s inaugural GNI Startups Pitchfest, in which graduates from the North American cohorts of our Startups Lab and Boot Camp were invited to compete for additional funding. Nine Startups pitched a new experiment or initiative that could make their businesses more sustainable to a jury comprised of GNI and industry leadership. Congratulations to our winners:
- Annelise Pierce, Shasta Scout: Launching an innovative community engagement project to build trust, deepen coverage, and broaden readership
- Travers Johnson, Queerency: Creating a video ambassador program for content creators to produce smart, engaging, and viral-focused videos
- Megan Raposa, Sioux Falls Simplified: Developing a “Welcome Guide” to introduce new readers to the publication along with helpful content about local government, schools, resources and culture.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Behind ads privacy: our latest Publisher Privacy Q&A
Curious how the Privacy Sandbox will keep people’s data private?
In the second episode of our Publisher Privacy Q&A video series, we simplify how the technology behind the Privacy Sandbox works and how its solutions incorporate tested privacy practices into online advertising. We also explore how Chrome is designing new capabilities to help advertisers reach their audiences in more privacy-forward ways, and why we believe these solutions will last for the long term.
Questions covered in episode 2:
- How will the Privacy Sandbox solutions keep people’s data private?
- How will the Privacy Sandbox impact my advertisers?
- Will Privacy Sandbox solutions last?
Stay tuned for the third Publisher Privacy Q&A episode coming in January 2022. In the meantime, check out episode 1 of this series, and the Privacy Sandbox website for more information and the latest timeline on solution development, testing and releases.
Source: The Official Google Blog
The new Indigenous Americas hub on Google Arts & Culture
In the month of November and beyond, we celebrate the incredible contributions Native Americans have made to contemporary American culture. Today, there are 574 federally-recognized American Indian tribes in the United States alone; a testament to the resilience and fortitude of these nations. As tribes build towards the future of their communities, they are also drawing from their rich histories and cultures to inspire new generations.
On the occasion of Native American Heritage Month in the United States, we are proud to be collaborating with Google Arts & Culture and over 40 other cultural institutions to bring online 90+ stories to the new Indigenous Americas hub: a collection of Indigenous art and culture that spans beyond the U.S. and across the Americas to make these stories available to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Since its inception in 1998, the Harvard Project’s Honoring Nations has awarded 148 tribal programs that represent the very best in local self-governance, and serve as models of inspiration, innovation, and achievement. We invite you to dive into the stories of the Ohero:kon Youth Rites of Passage Program that supports Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) teens reconnect with their roots, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Language Revitalization that builds pathways for their people to maintain cultural identity through learning their native language, the Chickasaw Nation Sick Child Care Program that supports working families and improves community health, the Joint Tribal-State Jurisdiction which focuses on rehabilitation through the justice system, or the Tulalip Tribal Court AlterNative Sentencing Program to better understand the new standards of a culturally appropriate justice system to create safer communities.
These highlights from Honoring Nations are part of the the 90+ stories now available in one place for the first iteration of the Indigenous Americas hub on Google Arts & Culture, building on our work with long-standing Google Arts & Culture partners including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and Indian Arts and Crafts Board at the US Department of the Interior, among others.
On this new hub, dive into new and existing content from partners across the Americas – from the historic work of the Native American Code Talkers in the U.S. to the masters of the Totonac Spiritual Cuisine in Mexico – and celebrate the past and present of Indigenous cultures with a tour of the dizzying dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park and a look at contemporary Inuit ceramics.
We’re hoping this will inspire you to start your journey of learning more about Indigenous cultures in the Americas, and that you’ll come back regularly as we work with cultural institutions to tell more Indigenous stories.
Source: The Official Google Blog
One year of Google Search Central
