Tag Archives: area 120

Overcoming the language barrier in videos with Aloud

Have you ever wanted to learn something from a video, but couldn’t because it was in another language? If your answer is yes, you’re not alone.

That’s why we are introducing Aloud, a new product from Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects. Using Aloud, creators can quickly and easily dub their videos into multiple languages, unlocking knowledge that might be trapped in a single language today. We support dubbing into Spanish and Portuguese, with Hindi, Bahasa-Indonesian and other languages coming soon. We hope this makes dubbing more accessible to creators who previously considered it too difficult or too costly. And you can request early access starting today.

The language barrier

We grew up in Sri Lanka at a time before computing was mainstream, but had the opportunity to learn English at a young age. The ability to read and learn about new technologies in books only available in English opened our world and helped us develop a passion for technology. But English proficiency wasn't commonplace, and many of our friends had a much harder time. The language barrier was real for them, and the playing field was not level.

The methods of learning have changed since then, and research shows that 46% of global viewers use video to learn something new. But much of today’s video content is still being produced in English, and more than 80% of the world does not speak the language. For them, English videos are not accessible, and the playing field is still not level.

Subtitles can help bridge the language gap, but they’re not always ideal on mobile devices due to the small form factor, the necessity of constant attention to the screen, and accessibility challenges for those with visual or reading impairments. Dubbing, the process of adding a translated voice track, overcomes those limitations, but is time-consuming and cost-prohibitive for most creators.

With Aloud, dubbing can be as easy as typing in the language you speak

The text editor based user interface that lets creators fine-tune their dub.

A preview of our text editor based (video editing-less) dubbing experience.

Dubbing used to take weeks worth of effort and a large budget. But with Aloud, you only need a few minutes. We use advances in audio separation, machine translation and speech synthesis to reduce time-consuming and costly steps like translation, video editing and audio production. You do not even need to know any language other than the ones you already speak, and all of this is available at no cost to the creator.

To dub with Aloud, all you need to do is provide the video and subtitles in the original language. If subtitles are not available, you can also quickly review the text transcript that we generate. With those inputs, Aloud can produce informative dubs like the one below:

The above video is a Hindi dub made with Aloud that debuted at Google IO (original). Here is one dubbed into Spanish (original), and another into Portuguese (original).

Access a global audience, while staying in control

With dubbing, you can now reach previously unreachable portions of the world’s population. In our experiments, we have seen double-digit growth in views just by dubbing into one additional language.

We know you as a creator take pride in the content that you create, so we want to ensure that you remain in control. You decide which videos to dub, how to publish them, how much effort to put in and bring in language experts if you so choose. Aloud doesn’t create new content — it only uses the original speech and translates it into a different language of your choice. We're also working with YouTube to let creators add multiple audio tracks to their videos, a new feature that they started testing with a small group of creators late last year.

Viewers have transparency

Our goal is to open up previously inaccessible information to the world. At the same time, we’re vigilant about how the technology is used, and we want to make sure that synthetically dubbed content is never confused with the original, or with content that is dubbed by voice actors. So to ensure transparency, we require from our creators that all dubs produced by Aloud state clearly (in the video description, as a pinned comment or in the post credits screen) that they are synthetic dubs with a reference to the original.

Request early access today

We are starting this process with a focus on informational content, as we think it will help the most people. As we learn and improve on our tech, we plan to expand to other types of content as well.

Let's overcome the language barrier together – request early access at aloud.area120.google.com.

Introducing Checks: simplifying privacy for app developers

Can I trust this app with my data? Is this app respecting my privacy rights? These are questions consumers are asking more and more about mobile apps and the developers who create them. In turn, developers are faced with a privacy and compliance landscape that is becoming increasingly more complex. And the path to compliance can be both time-consuming and difficult.

We believe every developer — no matter the stage or size of their company — deserves access to easy-to-use tools that help them achieve their goals, while making privacy compliance simpler.

That’s why today, as part of Google’s in-house incubator Area 120, we’re launching Checks, a new privacy platform. We are on a mission to help simplify privacy and reduce risk for mobile app developers.

A shared passion to help developers succeed

In 2018, as the world prepared for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we were hearing that mobile app developers were struggling to feel prepared to meet the new privacy expectations under GDPR, and they hoped Google could help. Having previously built tools like Android Vitals to address developers’ technical challenges, we had an idea to use Google’s artificial intelligence and resources to create a new product to help mobile app developers address their privacy compliance needs. Since we worked together for years on Google Play, we knew we could bring this vision to life as a team.

Joining Area 120 allowed us to focus full-time on creating a solution that simplifies privacy for developers distributing on both Android and iOS. Over the past two years, our team has spent time listening to feedback from hundreds of mobile app developers on their approach to privacy, and partnered closely with 40 highly-engaged early adopters to refine our product and roadmap. We believe Checks will help mobile app developers of all sizes save time by replacing complicated processes and providing automated privacy insights.

Greater confidence for app developers

We’ve heard developers say it’s difficult to keep pace with regulatory and app store policy changes, and determine how those changes apply to their apps. Checks helps developers gain confidence to make informed decisions by identifying potential compliance issues, providing clear actionable insights in simple language, and offering links to relevant resources.

Checks scans multiple sources of information including an app’s privacy policy, SDK information, and network traffic to generate a report that indicates the number of Checks performed, new issues, and issues that have been resolved.

Save time and money

Teams are able to better collaborate across legal, business and engineering roles on the Checks platform. Our product provides everyone access to the same unique insights — without the customer having to perform any technical integrations — which helps reduce the number of messages, meetings and documents necessary to track down information. Teams can focus on evaluating what actions to take and respond faster.

Screenshot of Checks’ Data Monitoring report, spotlighting the SDK findings. A list of SDKs that are in use by an app is provided, and any changes in the last 30 days are flagged as new.

Gain visibility

Software Developer Kits (SDKs) can change their functionality at any time, sometimes without the app developer knowing it. Checks helps mobile app developers who use SDKs by detecting when their app’s data sharing practices have changed and then sending them an automated alert. If the change was not intended, the developer can further investigate where the new data is being shared and make necessary changes.

Screenshot of Checks’ Store Disclosure report. A chart indicates what data types may be collected or shared by an app, and if evidence of the data type was found in permissions, network traffic, or an app’s privacy policy.

Help completing Google Play’s Data safety section

Many mobile app developers are still preparing for the launch of Google Play’s Data safety section, which will give end users more transparency into what data apps collect or share and how apps use their data. Checks can help developers get started by identifying what information they may need to declare and the basis for the recommendation. This can help them feel confident as they decide what to include.

Request early access today

We want to help developers build mobile apps that their users can enjoy and trust. We look forward to continuing to work closely with developers to ensure Checks provides solutions that developers need.

If you’re working on privacy compliance for mobile apps, visit checks.area120.google.com to learn more and get started today.

Creating new digital businesses with Qaya

When Google moved to “work from home” due to COVID-19 in 2020, I was a Founder-in-Residence in Area 120, Google’s incubator for experimental products. I had spent the prior two years in Area 120 developing Kormo, a jobs marketplace for the “next billion users” in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. With time at home to revisit my passion for music and writing, I had a chance to reflect on my belief in creator entrepreneurship, and how to make it part of what I built next.

After spending time with dozens of creators, we consistently heard that building a digital creator business is time-consuming and difficult. This sparked a new project idea: Qaya, a product that provides web storefronts for creators who want to sell products and services directly to their audiences. Today, as part of Area 120, we are announcing Qaya’s U.S. beta launch.

This animation shows a Qaya creator’s storefront on both mobile and desktop. The screens show the storefront home, along with the creator’s selected profile links and products.

Qaya is a small and agile team dedicated to helping creators build businesses on the web. Our project began with a simple idea: creators are the next generation of entrepreneurs. As the CEOs of their own businesses, they need the same commercial tools as any successful founder. Since we began live testing in early 2021, we’ve learned a lot from creators on Qaya, their fans and other creator economy projects.

Creators on Qaya sell everything from trapeze workout guides to wellness training videos, photo filters, beat packs, ASMR read-alouds, productivity templates, knitting patterns and much more. We support pay-gated and free products, with tipping, subscription and other monetization types coming soon.

Alt text: A mobile view of a creator's product detail page on Qaya. The page shows information about the product, including contents and price.

Creators use Qaya as the hub for their business activity across the web. Many link to their Qaya storefronts from their social media bios, and showcase digital products they upload or products and services hosted on other sites. We provide custom yourname.channel or qaya.store/your-name URLs, with payment functionality built in.

Mobile and desktop renderings of the Qaya page for a creator named Jamie Chung.

We also developed customer management and analytics tools that creators use to connect with their fans and understand sales and content performance.

A creator's Qaya dashboard, containing stats on products and sales over time.

Lastly, we know it’s important for creators to grow their audiences. So we’ve started to integrate with other Google products, including YouTube’s Merch Shelf. If you’re an eligible YouTube creator, you can now promote products from Qaya directly below videos on your YouTube channel.

This image shows a creator using Qaya and the YouTube Merch Shelf simultaneously. The creator's products appear on YouTube, under their videos. Consumers can click through to learn more or buy on Qaya.

We’re focused on the U.S. today, but hope to bring Qaya to more countries soon. And, we’re exploring ways to support creators as they experiment with other types of digital goods.

Google has always invested in creators, from publishers on the early internet to YouTubers today. Our goal with Qaya is to explore new ways to continue this work: giving creators tools to build successful, owner-operated businesses on the web.

If you’re a creator and you’d like to work together, you can request an invitation from Qaya’s site.

Organize your documents effortlessly with Stack

Have you ever lost a receipt you needed for a refund? Or misplaced an important tax document? Or forgot a bill and incurred a fine? I’ve done all three. (More than once!) 

As we go through life, we come across many documents that we might need in the future. Organizing these documents takes time and effort. So, if you’re anything like me, you might end up with piles of papers lying around your house (or PDFs scattered across your computer desktop). And good luck finding them when you actually need them. 

I joined Google a couple of years ago when my education startup, Socratic, was acquired. At Socratic, we used Google’s computer vision and language understanding to make learning easier for high school students. I wondered if we could apply the same technologies to make organizing documents easier. 

To experiment with this idea, my colleague Mathew Cowan and I joined Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator. We worked with DocAI, a team in Google Cloud whose artificial intelligence has helped companies analyze billions of documents. We found that by applying DocAI’s enterprise technology to personal documents, we could help people get organized.
Stack's logo, which has blue, green and yellow rectangles stacked on one another near the word Stack

Today, we’re launching Stack, our experimental app for Android. It’s early days — our algorithms still get things wrong, but we’re improving them every day. Here are some of the things you can do with Stack:

Effortlessly categorize your documents.

Take a photo of a document and Stack will scan it, automatically name it for you, and suggest the right category — or “stack,” as we call them — for you to store it in. 

An animation showing a receipt from a store being scanned and saved.

Find things faster.

Stack will identify important information in your documents (such as “due date” or “total amount due”) and pull it out to make it easier to find and access. You can also search through the full text of your documents (not just the title) to quickly find what you need.

An animation showing details from a water bill being scanned in Stack

Never lose a document.

Stack uses Google's advanced security and sign-in technology to protect your documents. For extra protection on your phone, you can require a scan of your face or fingerprint every time you unlock the app. 


Stack can also automatically save a copy of your documents to Google Drive. That way, should you ever decide to stop using Stack, your documents will be accessible in Drive and easy to export. 

A laptop showing Google Drive and a smartphone showing a fingerprint scanning login screen.

We know how stressful staying on top of your paperwork can be. So far, Stack has made us feel more organized and prepared for whatever life throws at us. We're excited about its potential to help you, too.


Stack is only available on Android in the U.S. You can install it through the Google Play store.

How we built a new tool without ever meeting in person

A little over a year ago, a group of us within Area 120, Google’s internal incubator, wanted to explore whether recorded video could help remote teams work better. Little did we know at the time that COVID-19 would soon send us all home, and we'd actually have to build the product remotely as well. That project became Threadit, short video recordings to share your work and connect with your team. 

Once we had a working  prototype, we started using Threadit to take back control of our working hours. Threadit, available from your browser or as a Chrome extension, helps you say and show more with a video message than with an email or chat. We use Threadit to show each other our progress, ask questions or request feedback without needing to coordinate schedules. This helps us reduce unnecessary meetings while still becoming a tighter-knit team. We have more time to think and do focused work, and the meetings we keep are more effective and easier to schedule for everyone. 

Today, Threadit is available to anyone who wants to try it. 

Threadit screenshots

Record yourself and your screen

To use Threadit, simply speak straight to the camera or share your screen; if you don’t like how it sounded, just hit record and try it again. Record as many short clips as you’d like, and Threadit will stitch them all together into one cohesive video message. When you’re done, send it off to your team. Anyone can reply with their own video message when they’re ready — it’s all part of one conversation.
Threadit screenshots

We know Threadit works because we used it ourselves. Our team has still never met in person. Instead of team whiteboarding sessions or quick updates around someone’s desk, we had to juggle work and family schedules. This meant more virtual meetings and lengthy text exchanges just to stay on the same page.


Show up how you want, when you want

People from all over the world helped us build Threadit, so using the tool became a great way to see one another without having to schedule live meetings across time zones. I’d send a Threadit to my colleagues in Japan during my normal working hours in Seattle; they’d respond during the hours that worked for them in Tokyo. Threadit helped us feel like we were working together in person, even though we were responding at different times from across the world — it built connections that email couldn’t. The best part? Nobody had to get up early or stay up late.

This became our new norm, whether with teammates in Tokyo or in their homes just down the street. I could record replies around putting my son down for a nap or cooking dinner, and review what I said so I came across how I wanted. Threadit gave us an opportunity to hear from everyone on our team, not just the loudest voices in a live meeting. We had more control over our time and could contribute when we were each ready.

Threadit screenshots

How will you use Threadit? 

Since we started, we’ve seen teams use Threadit in different ways, from sharing sales presentations to recording product tutorials to sending leadership updates. We even started using Threadit as a way of celebrating team birthdays! 

Because we all have enough productivity tools to manage as is, we built Threadit to work the way you do. Access Threadit directly from your web browser or mobile device. If you get our Chrome extension, you can record yourself and anything on your screen at any time, even from within Gmail. Send a Threadit to anyone by simply sharing the link — no  download necessary. 


Threadit screenshots

We’re excited for you to see how Threadit can help your team. Get started at threadit.area120.com.  

GameSnacks brings HTML5 games to Google products

Last February we announced GameSnacks, a HTML5 gaming platform from Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental products. We launched GameSnacks to test whether lightweight, casual games would resonate with people who use the internet via low memory devices on 2G and 3G networks, especially in countries like India and Indonesia.

Since then, millions of people from around the world have played our games. GameSnacks now has more than 100 games built by early game development partners. These games span multiple genres: classics (e.g. Chess), racing games (e.g. Retro Drift), puzzle games (e.g. Element Blocks), and hypercasual games (e.g. Cake Slice Ninja) to list a few. You can check out the full catalog by visiting gamesnacks.com.


Today, we’re sharing how we’ve broadened our efforts by bringing HTML5 games to Google products. We’re also inviting more game developers to join us as we grow the platform.

Finding HTML5 games to play is hard

When I mention HTML5 web gaming to friends and family, they fondly remember Flash gaming sites from 10 or 15 years ago. Web games have come a long way since then. Mobile browsers can now render rich graphics, and engines like Phaser, Construct and Cocos make it easier for developers to build HTML5 games. 

HTML5 games tend to be small, enabling them to load quickly in a variety of network conditions, whether on 2G near the outskirts of New Delhi or on an intermittent connection on a New York City subway. Users can play them on any device with a web browser: Android, iOS, and desktop. And across these devices, users don’t need to install anything to play. They simply tap on a link and start playing games immediately.

However, the distribution landscape for HTML5 games is fragmented. Developers have to painstakingly modify their HTML5 games to work across each app they integrate with or web portal they upload to. Discovering HTML5 games to play is often difficult.

We’ve been thinking about how we can make HTML5 game developers’ lives easier to ultimately get more HTML5 games out to more users. Here’s a closer look at how we’re doing this.

A new way to discover HTML5 games across Google products

Back in February 2020, we announced our partnership with Gojek to bring HTML5 games to their users and give developers a new distribution opportunity. Since then, we’ve been bringing the GameSnacks catalog to users across a variety of different Google apps. 

First, we’ve made it easy to access GameSnacks games directly from the New Tab page in Chrome, starting with users in India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Kenya. Users can get to gamesnacks.com via the Top Sites icon on Chrome on Android. The Games section is one of the most frequently visited sections of the page.

The game Stack Bounce played on Google Chrome in mobile.

Blast through blocks in Stack Bounce on GameSnacks on Google Chrome.

Second, we’ve brought GameSnacks games to Google Pay users in India. Google Pay initially started as a way to help users pay friends. Increasingly, they allow users to get many more things done: book rides, order food and now, entertain themselves.


Google Pay users in India can play GameSnacks games from the Games section of the app.

Bolly Beat played on Google Pay in India

Bounce to the rhythm in Bolly Beat on GameSnacks on Google Pay.

Third, we’re experimenting with bringing GameSnacks games to the Google Assistant. When select Android Assistant users ask to play a GameSnacks game, they can start playing instantly.


The game 99 Balls played on Google Assistant.

Ask Google to play 99 Balls on GameSnacks on Google Assistant.

And finally, we’re experimenting with surfacing GameSnacks games in Discover. Select users in India will see GameSnacks games appear in their feed:

The game Tiger Run on Google Discover.

See how far you can run in Tiger Run on GameSnacks on Google Discover.


GameSnacks will be a one-stop shop for developers to bring their HTML5 games to Google users, no matter what product they’re using. Over the coming months, we’ll look for more opportunities to bring GameSnacks games to more Google products.

An open call to game developers

We’re committed to helping game developers succeed with HTML5. Beyond continuing to help developers reach more users, we’ll help developers build meaningful gaming businesses by helping them better monetize HTML5 games. We’ll soon start experimenting with next-generation AdSense for Games ad formats with a select number of GameSnacks games.

Meanwhile, we’re continuing to add more high quality HTML5 games to our catalog. If you’re a game developer interested in being an early GameSnacks partner, reach out and let’s work together.

Make tracking your work easier than ever with Tables

I’ve been in the technology industry for a long time, including 10 years at Google. And during my years in the workforce, I’ve always had a difficult time tracking projects. Our teams stored notes and related tasks in different documents. Those documents always got out of date. We’d have to manually sync data between them. And I’d spend a lot of time coordinating between team members to prioritize and update statuses. I spent more time keeping track of work than actually working! 

Tracking work with existing tech solutions meant building a custom in-house solution or purchasing an off-the-shelf product, but these options are time-consuming, inflexible and expensive.

That's why we built Tables, a user-friendly, intuitive work tracking tool, as part of Area 120, Google's in-house incubator for experimental projects. Tables helps teams track work and automate tasks to save time and supercharge collaboration—without any coding required.

Save time, work smarter

Tables, with other teams at Google, is investing in automation. For Tables, this means Bots. With Bots, teams can easily schedule recurring email reminders when tasks are overdue, message a chat room when new form submissions are received, or move a task to someone else’s work queue when the status is changed.

Tables

Tables helps teams track work, no matter the task at hand.

Prior to Tables, you'd have to do a lot of manual work: check multiple different sources of data, collate it all together and then copy and paste it into another doc to hand it off. Tables makes automating these actions quick and easy, saving teams time and making collaboration seamless.

Integrated with Google

Getting started with Tables is easy. You can import data right from Google Sheets, share data with your Google Groups and assign tasks to your existing Google contacts. 

It’s time to spend more time working and less time tracking it. That’s why today, we launched the beta version of Tables in the U.S.—with both a free and paid plan. Now you can work more efficiently and collaborate easily, no matter the task. Get started today or visit our website to learn more. 

Fundo: a virtual experiences platform for creators

In 2018, while working on a project at Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, my colleague Sha Sajadieh and I went to VidCon, a major convention for the online video industry. The energy was absolutely incredible. Fans rushed across the convention floor to meet their favorite creators, and waited in massive queues for a selfie.

It reminded us that the YouTube community is amazing—the connections between creators and their audiences goes far deeper than just videos and comment threads. But we also thought: How can we create these magic moments for even more people, at any time, no matter where they are?  

This sparked an idea for a new Area 120 project: Fundo, a platform for virtual events and experiences, designed and built for creators. With Fundo, everything is live and interactive, using face-to-face video chat to mirror those in-person encounters. And it all happens using your computer or phone, from the comfort of home or on the go. 

Fundo also gives creators new monetization options to support what they do. Event hosts are in control of ticket prices and any discounts, including free events if preferred. Some creators using YouTube Channel Memberships offer Fundo Meet & Greets exclusively to channel members as a premium perk.

Over the past year, many parts of life had to move online and become virtual. While we didn’t build Fundo specifically because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mission of creating meaningful experiences online is even more important today. In addition to YouTube creators and their fans, we're seeing authors, fitness instructors, business and lifestyle consultants and others use Fundo to find new ways to connect.

We’ve been testing with early adopters, and today we are launching Fundo for all creators in the U.S. and Canada, with more locations coming soon.

One end-to-end platform

Virtual events, especially ticketed experiences, can be complicated. From scheduling to sign-ups, payment processing, communication and live streaming, there’s a lot to manage. Fundo makes it easy by providing a single end-to-end solution. Event hosts and their guests can do everything within the Fundo website, with no apps or additional software downloads required.

Brandon Rogers on Fundo

Fans can discover events happening on Fundo through our home page, or through links shared directly by their favorite creators. You choose an event, answer a few questions, complete the ticket purchase and you’re all set. Fundo will provide the event link and send reminders up until the start time, as well as technical support if needed. 

Safety is a top priority. Because Fundo is checking everyone’s ticket, there’s no risk of uninvited guests. We also have reporting and flagging features to curtail abuse.

Customized experiences

No two creators are the same, and no two audiences are the same. That’s why Fundo offers different types of experiences that can be adapted and customized. Creators can schedule an event in advance, or let fans request a time. They can meet one-on-one or in groups. They can invite co-hosts or take the stage solo.

As a fan, you’ll have a variety of experiences to choose from. Join the Q&A with Kreekcraft’s channel members in a group Meet & Greet:

Kreekcraft on Fundo

Take selfies together using our Photo Booth, with Las 2 Muñecas:

Las 2 Muñecas on Fundo

Or join a virtual workshop, like The East Family’s home mixology seminar:

The East Family on Fundo

Check out our calendar of all featured events, available now at fundo.town. If you are interested in using Fundo as a creator to host events, you can sign up now at fundo.town/creators

Orion Wifi helps venues improve cellular coverage

When I visit a grocery store or a doctors’ office, I sometimes have weak cellular coverage. I know there might be a public Wi-Fi network that could help, but it’s a pain to figure out which networks are high-quality and available to me. And then it’s another often-frustrating process to get connected.

What if my cellular carrier could give me the best of both worlds?

Orion Wifi helps solve this problem. Orion Wifi is a new platform from Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects. We’ve designed an easy way for public venues—like that grocery store, a medical office or a mall—to sell Wi-Fi capacity to cellular carriers.

With Orion Wifi, when you walk into that grocery store, your carrier can automatically and securely connect you to the Wi-Fi.

Although you don’t lift a finger, there’s a lot happening in the background. As you walk into the grocery store, Orion Wifi helps the local network tell the carrier about its price and quality. If the carrier decides the connection is good enough, we’ll auto-connect you. If the quality is too low, we won’t. When you are connected, Internet traffic flows over the Wi-Fi network just as if you had connected directly to the Wi-Fi; Orion cannot access users’ Internet traffic. 

That means more connectivity in more places—seamlessly and automatically.  

Public venues: more revenue, happier visitors

What’s in it for the grocery store? Poor connectivity is a problem for them, too. Disconnected visitors are unhappy visitors. So places like downtown districts, office buildings, stores, malls, restaurants, transit hubs and hospitals invest heavily in high-quality networks so that you can make a video call, send a picture and check your email.  

Orion Wifi uses those existing networks to connect more visitors, and to provide a new revenue stream to the venue owner. 

Orion Wifi works with most commercial and enterprise Wi-Fi systems, usually with no new hardware or software. Orion Wifi helps improve connectivity even for venues that have already deployed Distributed Antenna Systems or Small Cells to improve coverage. But unlike those systems, Orion Wifi is incredibly quick and easy to turn on.  

Partnering across cellular, Wi-Fi and real estate

We’re working with industry leaders across the telecommunications industry to make this happen.  

Google Fi and Republic Wireless will be among the first cellular carriers to use this new technology. We’re partnering with leading Wi-Fi manufacturers like Cisco Systems, CommScope (RUCKUS) and Juniper Mist to ensure that Orion Wifi is compatible and easy to deploy with their networking equipment. And we’re working with the Wireless Broadband Alliance on the emerging OpenRoaming standard to make Wi-Fi roaming even more powerful. 

To ensure ubiquitous access, we’re also partnering with experts in Wi-Fi and real estate to deploy Orion Wifi widely. Boingo, the leading carrier-grade Wi-Fi provider, is using Orion Wifi to expand its connectivity offering to travelers and visitors across their U.S. footprint. And we’re working with leaders in commercial real estate like 5G LLC, GigaMonster, CA Ventures and Single Digits to enable Orion Wifi at premium venues across the United States. 

Easy, quick and free

Starting today, Orion Wifi is available to United States-based public venues. We’ve made the sign-up process easy. There’s no cost to sign up, and no commitments or obligations. If you operate venues with high-quality commercial Wi-Fi networks, visit orion.area120.com, where you can use our self-service portal to try it out for yourself.  

Orion Wifi helps venues improve cellular coverage

When I visit a grocery store or a doctors’ office, I sometimes have weak cellular coverage. I know there might be a public Wi-Fi network that could help, but it’s a pain to figure out which networks are high-quality and available to me. And then it’s another often-frustrating process to get connected.

What if my cellular carrier could give me the best of both worlds?

Orion Wifi helps solve this problem. Orion Wifi is a new platform from Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects. We’ve designed an easy way for public venues—like that grocery store, a medical office or a mall—to sell Wi-Fi capacity to cellular carriers.

With Orion Wifi, when you walk into that grocery store, your carrier can automatically and securely connect you to the Wi-Fi.

Although you don’t lift a finger, there’s a lot happening in the background. As you walk into the grocery store, Orion Wifi helps the local network tell the carrier about its price and quality. If the carrier decides the connection is good enough, we’ll auto-connect you. If the quality is too low, we won’t. When you are connected, Internet traffic flows over the Wi-Fi network just as if you had connected directly to the Wi-Fi; Orion cannot access users’ Internet traffic. 

That means more connectivity in more places—seamlessly and automatically.  

Public venues: more revenue, happier visitors

What’s in it for the grocery store? Poor connectivity is a problem for them, too. Disconnected visitors are unhappy visitors. So places like downtown districts, office buildings, stores, malls, restaurants, transit hubs and hospitals invest heavily in high-quality networks so that you can make a video call, send a picture and check your email.  

Orion Wifi uses those existing networks to connect more visitors, and to provide a new revenue stream to the venue owner. 

Orion Wifi works with most commercial and enterprise Wi-Fi systems, usually with no new hardware or software. Orion Wifi helps improve connectivity even for venues that have already deployed Distributed Antenna Systems or Small Cells to improve coverage. But unlike those systems, Orion Wifi is incredibly quick and easy to turn on.  

Partnering across cellular, Wi-Fi and real estate

We’re working with industry leaders across the telecommunications industry to make this happen.  

Google Fi and Republic Wireless will be among the first cellular carriers to use this new technology. We’re partnering with leading Wi-Fi manufacturers like Cisco Systems, CommScope (RUCKUS) and Juniper Mist to ensure that Orion Wifi is compatible and easy to deploy with their networking equipment. And we’re working with the Wireless Broadband Alliance on the emerging OpenRoaming standard to make Wi-Fi roaming even more powerful. 

To ensure ubiquitous access, we’re also partnering with experts in Wi-Fi and real estate to deploy Orion Wifi widely. Boingo, the leading carrier-grade Wi-Fi provider, is using Orion Wifi to expand its connectivity offering to travelers and visitors across their U.S. footprint. And we’re working with leaders in commercial real estate like 5G LLC, GigaMonster, CA Ventures and Single Digits to enable Orion Wifi at premium venues across the United States. 

Easy, quick and free

Starting today, Orion Wifi is available to United States-based public venues. We’ve made the sign-up process easy. There’s no cost to sign up, and no commitments or obligations. If you operate venues with high-quality commercial Wi-Fi networks, visit orion.area120.com, where you can use our self-service portal to try it out for yourself.