Tag Archives: developers

Google I/O 2021: Being helpful in moments that matter

 

It’s great to be back hosting our I/O Developers Conference this year. Pulling up to our Mountain View campus this morning, I felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long while. Of course, it’s not the same without our developer community here in person. COVID-19 has deeply affected our entire global community over the past year and continues to take a toll. Places such as Brazil, and my home country of India, are now going through their most difficult moments of the pandemic yet. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by COVID and we are all hoping for better days ahead.

The last year has put a lot into perspective. At Google, it’s also given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with a singular goal: building a more helpful Google, for everyone. That means being helpful to people in the moments that matter and giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health, and happiness. 

Helping in moments that matter

Sometimes it’s about helping in big moments, like keeping 150 million students and educators learning virtually over the last year with Google Classroom. Other times it’s about helping in little moments that add up to big changes for everyone. For example, we’re introducing safer routing in Maps. This AI-powered capability in Maps can identify road, weather, and traffic conditions where you are likely to brake suddenly; our aim is to reduce up to 100 million events like this every year. 

Reimagining the future of work

One of the biggest ways we can help is by reimagining the future of work. Over the last year, we’ve seen work transform in unprecedented ways, as offices and coworkers have been replaced by kitchen countertops and pets. Many companies, including ours, will continue to offer flexibility even when it’s safe to be in the same office again. Collaboration tools have never been more critical, and today we announced a new smart canvas experience in Google Workspace that enables even richer collaboration. 

Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

Responsible next-generation AI

We’ve made remarkable advances over the past 22 years, thanks to our progress in some of the most challenging areas of AI, including translation, images and voice. These advances have powered improvements across Google products, making it possible to talk to someone in another language using Assistant’s interpreter mode, view cherished memories on Photos, or use Google Lens to solve a tricky math problem. 

We’ve also used AI to improve the core Search experience for billions of people by taking a huge leap forward in a computer’s ability to process natural language. Yet, there are still moments when computers just don’t understand us. That’s because language is endlessly complex: We use it to tell stories, crack jokes, and share ideas — weaving in concepts we’ve learned over the course of our lives. The richness and flexibility of language make it one of humanity’s greatest tools and one of computer science’s greatest challenges. 

Today I am excited to share our latest research in natural language understanding: LaMDA. LaMDA is a language model for dialogue applications. It’s open domain, which means it is designed to converse on any topic. For example, LaMDA understands quite a bit about the planet Pluto. So if a student wanted to discover more about space, they could ask about Pluto and the model would give sensible responses, making learning even more fun and engaging. If that student then wanted to switch over to a different topic — say, how to make a good paper airplane — LaMDA could continue the conversation without any retraining.

This is one of the ways we believe LaMDA can make information and computing radically more accessible and easier to use (and you can learn more about that here). 

We have been researching and developing language models for many years. We’re focused on ensuring LaMDA meets our incredibly high standards on fairness, accuracy, safety, and privacy, and that it is developed consistently with our AI Principles. And we look forward to incorporating conversation features into products like Google Assistant, Search, and Workspace, as well as exploring how to give capabilities to developers and enterprise customers.

LaMDA is a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it’s still only trained on text. When people communicate with each other they do it across images, text, audio, and video. So we need to build multimodal models (MUM) to allow people to naturally ask questions across different types of information. With MUM you could one day plan a road trip by asking Google to “find a route with beautiful mountain views.” This is one example of how we’re making progress towards more natural and intuitive ways of interacting with Search.

Pushing the frontier of computing

Translation, image recognition, and voice recognition laid the foundation for complex models like LaMDA and multimodal models. Our compute infrastructure is how we drive and sustain these advances, and TPUs, our custom-built machine learning processes, are a big part of that. Today we announced our next generation of TPUs: the TPU v4. These are powered by the v4 chip, which is more than twice as fast as the previous generation. One pod can deliver more than one exaflop, equivalent to the computing power of 10 million laptops combined. This is the fastest system we’ve ever deployed, and a historic milestone for us. Previously to get to an exaflop, you needed to build a custom supercomputer. And we'll soon have dozens of TPUv4 pods in our data centers, many of which will be operating at or near 90% carbon-free energy. They’ll be available to our Cloud customers later this year.

(Left) TPU v4 chip tray; (Right) TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center 

It’s tremendously exciting to see this pace of innovation. As we look further into the future, there are types of problems that classical computing will not be able to solve in reasonable time. Quantum computing can help. Achieving our quantum milestone was a tremendous accomplishment, but we’re still at the beginning of a multiyear journey. We continue to work to get to our next big milestone in quantum computing: building an error-corrected quantum computer, which could help us increase battery efficiency, create more sustainable energy, and improve drug discovery. To help us get there, we’ve opened a new state of the art Quantum AI campus with our first quantum data center and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

Inside our new Quantum AI campus.

Safer with Google

At Google we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. And advances in computer science and AI are how we continue to make them better. We keep more users safe by blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages, and potential cyber attacks than anyone else in the world.

Our focus on data minimization pushes us to do more, with less data. Two years ago at I/O, I announced Auto-Delete, which encourages users to have their activity data automatically and continuously deleted. We’ve since made Auto-Delete the default for all new Google Accounts. Now, after 18 months we automatically delete your activity data, unless you tell us to do it sooner. It’s now active for over 2 billion accounts.

All of our products are guided by three important principles: With one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures, our products are secure by default. We strictly uphold responsible data practices so every product we build is private by design. And we create easy to use privacy and security settings so you’re in control.

Long term research: Project Starline

We were all grateful to have video conferencing over the last year to stay in touch with family and friends, and keep schools and businesses going. But there is no substitute for being together in the room with someone. 

Several years ago we kicked off a project called Project Starline to use technology to explore what’s possible. Using high-resolution cameras and custom-built depth sensors, it captures your shape and appearance from multiple perspectives, and then fuses them together to create an extremely detailed, real-time 3D model. The resulting data is many gigabits per second, so to send an image this size over existing networks, we developed novel compression and streaming algorithms that reduce the data by a factor of more than 100. We also developed a breakthrough light-field display that shows you the realistic representation of someone sitting in front of you. As sophisticated as the technology is, it vanishes, so you can focus on what’s most important. 

We’ve spent thousands of hours testing it at our own offices, and the results are promising. There’s also excitement from our lead enterprise partners, and we’re working with partners in health care and media to get early feedback. In pushing the boundaries of remote collaboration, we've made technical advances that will improve our entire suite of communications products. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

A person having a conversation with someone over Project Starline.

Solving complex sustainability challenges

Another area of research is our work to drive forward sustainability. Sustainability has been a core value for us for more than 20 years. We were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007. We were the first to match our operations with 100% renewable energy in 2017, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Last year we eliminated our entire carbon legacy. 

Our next ambition is our biggest yet: operating on carbon free energy by the year 2030. This represents a significant step change from current approaches and is a moonshot on the same scale as quantum computing. It presents equally hard problems to solve, from sourcing carbon-free energy in every place we operate to ensuring it can run every hour of every day. 

Building on the first carbon-intelligent computing platform that we rolled out last year, we’ll soon be the first company to implement carbon-intelligent load shifting across both time and place within our data center network. By this time next year we’ll be shifting more than a third of non-production compute to times and places with greater availability of carbon-free energy. And we are working to apply our Cloud AI with novel drilling techniques and fiber optic sensing to deliver geothermal power in more places, starting in our Nevada data centers next year.

Investments like these are needed to get to 24/7 carbon-free energy, and it’s happening in Mountain View, California, too. We’re building our new campus to the highest sustainability standards. When completed, these buildings will feature a first- of- its- kind, dragonscale solar skin, equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts. They will house the largest geothermal pile system in North America to help heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It’s been amazing to see it come to life.

(Left) Rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; (Right) Model view with dragon scale solar skin.

A celebration of technology

I/O isn’t just a celebration of technology but of the people who use it, and build it — including the millions of developers around the world who joined us virtually today. Over the past year we’ve seen people use technology in profound ways: to keep themselves healthy and safe, to learn and grow, to connect, and to help one another through really difficult times. It’s been inspiring to see and has made us more committed than ever to being helpful in the moments that matter. 

I look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s I/O — in person, I hope. Until then, be safe and well.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet

Google I/O 2021: Being helpful in moments that matter

It’s great to be back hosting our I/O Developers Conference this year. Pulling up to our Mountain View campus this morning, I felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long while. Of course, it’s not the same without our developer community here in person. COVID-19 has deeply affected our entire global community over the past year and continues to take a toll. Places such as Brazil, and my home country of India, are now going through their most difficult moments of the pandemic yet. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by COVID and we are all hoping for better days ahead.

The last year has put a lot into perspective. At Google, it’s also given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with a singular goal: building a more helpful Google, for everyone. That means being helpful to people in the moments that matter and giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health and happiness. 

Helping in moments that matter

Sometimes it’s about helping in big moments, like keeping 150 million students and educators learning virtually over the last year with Google Classroom. Other times it’s about helping in little moments that add up to big changes for everyone. For example, we’re introducing safer routing in Maps. This AI-powered capability in Maps can identify road, weather and traffic conditions where you are likely to brake suddenly; our aim is to reduce up to 100 million events like this every year. 

Reimagining the future of work

One of the biggest ways we can help is by reimagining the future of work. Over the last year, we’ve seen work transform in unprecedented ways, as offices and coworkers have been replaced by kitchen countertops and pets. Many companies, including ours, will continue to offer flexibility even when it’s safe to be in the same office again. Collaboration tools have never been more critical, and today we announced a new smart canvas experience in Google Workspace that enables even richer collaboration. 

GIF of Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

 Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

Responsible next-generation AI

We’ve made remarkable advances over the past 22 years, thanks to our progress in some of the most challenging areas of AI, including translation, images and voice. These advances have powered improvements across Google products, making it possible to talk to someone in another language using Assistant’s interpreter mode, view cherished memories on Photos or use Google Lens to solve a tricky math problem. 

We’ve also used AI to improve the core Search experience for billions of people by taking a huge leap forward in a computer’s ability to process natural language. Yet, there are still moments when computers just don’t understand us. That’s because language is endlessly complex: We use it to tell stories, crack jokes and share ideas — weaving in concepts we’ve learned over the course of our lives. The richness and flexibility of language make it one of humanity’s greatest tools and one of computer science’s greatest challenges. 

Today I am excited to share our latest research in natural language understanding: LaMDA. LaMDA is a language model for dialogue applications. It’s open domain, which means it is designed to converse on any topic. For example, LaMDA understands quite a bit about the planet Pluto. So if a student wanted to discover more about space, they could ask about Pluto and the model would give sensible responses, making learning even more fun and engaging. If that student then wanted to switch over to a different topic — say, how to make a good paper airplane — LaMDA could continue the conversation without any retraining.

This is one of the ways we believe LaMDA can make information and computing radically more accessible and easier to use (and you can learn more about that here). 

We have been researching and developing language models for many years. We’re focused on ensuring LaMDA meets our incredibly high standards on fairness, accuracy, safety and privacy, and that it is developed consistently with our AI Principles. And we look forward to incorporating conversation features into products like Google Assistant, Search and Workspace, as well as exploring how to give capabilities to developers and enterprise customers.

LaMDA is a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it’s still only trained on text. When people communicate with each other they do it across images, text, audio and video. So we need to build multimodal models (MUM) to allow people to naturally ask questions across different types of information. With MUM you could one day plan a road trip by asking Google to “find a route with beautiful mountain views.” This is one example of how we’re making progress towards more natural and intuitive ways of interacting with Search.

Pushing the frontier of computing

Translation, image recognition and voice recognition laid the foundation for complex models like LaMDA and multimodal models. Our compute infrastructure is how we drive and sustain these advances, and TPUs, our custom-built machine learning processes, are a big part of that. Today we announced our next generation of TPUs: the TPU v4. These are powered by the v4 chip, which is more than twice as fast as the previous generation. One pod can deliver more than one exaflop, equivalent to the computing power of 10 million laptops combined. This is the fastest system we’ve ever deployed, and a historic milestone for us. Previously to get to an exaflop, you needed to build a custom supercomputer. And we'll soon have dozens of TPUv4 pods in our data centers, many of which will be operating at or near 90% carbon-free energy. They’ll be available to our Cloud customers later this year.

Images of a TPU v4 chip tray, and of TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center

Left: TPU v4 chip tray; Right: TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center 

It’s tremendously exciting to see this pace of innovation. As we look further into the future, there are types of problems that classical computing will not be able to solve in reasonable time. Quantum computing can help. Achieving our quantum milestone was a tremendous accomplishment, but we’re still at the beginning of a multiyear journey. We continue to work to get to our next big milestone in quantum computing: building an error-corrected quantum computer, which could help us increase battery efficiency, create more sustainable energy and improve drug discovery. To help us get there, we’ve opened a new state of the art Quantum AI campus with our first quantum data center and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

A photo of the interior of our new Quantum AI campus

Inside our new Quantum AI campus.

Safer with Google

At Google we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. And advances in computer science and AI are how we continue to make them better. We keep more users safe by blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages and potential cyber attacks than anyone else in the world.

Our focus on data minimization pushes us to do more, with less data. Two years ago at I/O, I announced Auto-Delete, which encourages users to have their activity data automatically and continuously deleted. We’ve since made Auto-Delete the default for all new Google Accounts. Now, after 18 months we automatically delete your activity data, unless you tell us to do it sooner. It’s now active for over 2 billion accounts.

All of our products are guided by three important principles: With one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures, our products are secure by default. We strictly uphold responsible data practices so every product we build is private by design. And we create easy to use privacy and security settings so you’re in control.

Long-term research: Project Starline

We were all grateful to have video conferencing over the last year to stay in touch with family and friends, and keep schools and businesses going. But there is no substitute for being together in the room with someone. 

Several years ago we kicked off a project called Project Starline to use technology to explore what’s possible. Using high-resolution cameras and custom-built depth sensors, it captures your shape and appearance from multiple perspectives, and then fuses them together to create an extremely detailed, real-time 3D model. The resulting data is many gigabits per second, so to send an image this size over existing networks, we developed novel compression and streaming algorithms that reduce the data by a factor of more than 100. We also developed a breakthrough light-field display that shows you the realistic representation of someone sitting in front of you. As sophisticated as the technology is, it vanishes, so you can focus on what’s most important. 

We’ve spent thousands of hours testing it at our own offices, and the results are promising. There’s also excitement from our lead enterprise partners, and we’re working with partners in health care and media to get early feedback. In pushing the boundaries of remote collaboration, we've made technical advances that will improve our entire suite of communications products. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

A person in a booth talking to someone over Project Starline

A person having a conversation with someone over Project Starline.

Solving complex sustainability challenges

Another area of research is our work to drive forward sustainability. Sustainability has been a core value for us for more than 20 years. We were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007. We were the first to match our operations with 100% renewable energy in 2017, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Last year we eliminated our entire carbon legacy. 

Our next ambition is our biggest yet: operating on carbon free energy by the year 2030. This represents a significant step change from current approaches and is a moonshot on the same scale as quantum computing. It presents equally hard problems to solve, from sourcing carbon-free energy in every place we operate to ensuring it can run every hour of every day. 

Building on the first carbon-intelligent computing platform that we rolled out last year, we’ll soon be the first company to implement carbon-intelligent load shifting across both time and place within our data center network. By this time next year we’ll be shifting more than a third of non-production compute to times and places with greater availability of carbon-free energy. And we are working to apply our Cloud AI with novel drilling techniques and fiber optic sensing to deliver geothermal power in more places, starting in our Nevada data centers next year.

Investments like these are needed to get to 24/7 carbon-free energy, and it’s happening in Mountain View, California, too. We’re building our new campus to the highest sustainability standards. When completed, these buildings will feature a first-of-its-kind dragonscale solar skin, equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts. They will house the largest geothermal pile system in North America to help heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It’s been amazing to see it come to life.

Images with a rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; and a model view with dragon scale solar skin.

Left: Rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; Right: Model view with dragon scale solar skin.

A celebration of technology

I/O isn’t just a celebration of technology but of the people who use it, and build it — including the millions of developers around the world who joined us virtually today. Over the past year we’ve seen people use technology in profound ways: To keep themselves healthy and safe, to learn and grow, to connect and to help one another through really difficult times. It’s been inspiring to see and has made us more committed than ever to being helpful in the moments that matter. 

I look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s I/O — in person, I hope. Until then, be safe and well.

Google I/O 2021: Being helpful in moments that matter

It’s great to be back hosting our I/O Developers Conference this year. Pulling up to our Mountain View campus this morning, I felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long while. Of course, it’s not the same without our developer community here in person. COVID-19 has deeply affected our entire global community over the past year and continues to take a toll. Places such as Brazil, and my home country of India, are now going through their most difficult moments of the pandemic yet. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by COVID and we are all hoping for better days ahead.

The last year has put a lot into perspective. At Google, it’s also given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with a singular goal: building a more helpful Google, for everyone. That means being helpful to people in the moments that matter and giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health and happiness. 

Helping in moments that matter

Sometimes it’s about helping in big moments, like keeping 150 million students and educators learning virtually over the last year with Google Classroom. Other times it’s about helping in little moments that add up to big changes for everyone. For example, we’re introducing safer routing in Maps. This AI-powered capability in Maps can identify road, weather and traffic conditions where you are likely to brake suddenly; our aim is to reduce up to 100 million events like this every year. 

Reimagining the future of work

One of the biggest ways we can help is by reimagining the future of work. Over the last year, we’ve seen work transform in unprecedented ways, as offices and coworkers have been replaced by kitchen countertops and pets. Many companies, including ours, will continue to offer flexibility even when it’s safe to be in the same office again. Collaboration tools have never been more critical, and today we announced a new smart canvas experience in Google Workspace that enables even richer collaboration. 

GIF of Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

 Smart Canvas integration with Google Meet

Responsible next-generation AI

We’ve made remarkable advances over the past 22 years, thanks to our progress in some of the most challenging areas of AI, including translation, images and voice. These advances have powered improvements across Google products, making it possible to talk to someone in another language using Assistant’s interpreter mode, view cherished memories on Photos or use Google Lens to solve a tricky math problem. 

We’ve also used AI to improve the core Search experience for billions of people by taking a huge leap forward in a computer’s ability to process natural language. Yet, there are still moments when computers just don’t understand us. That’s because language is endlessly complex: We use it to tell stories, crack jokes and share ideas — weaving in concepts we’ve learned over the course of our lives. The richness and flexibility of language make it one of humanity’s greatest tools and one of computer science’s greatest challenges. 

Today I am excited to share our latest research in natural language understanding: LaMDA. LaMDA is a language model for dialogue applications. It’s open domain, which means it is designed to converse on any topic. For example, LaMDA understands quite a bit about the planet Pluto. So if a student wanted to discover more about space, they could ask about Pluto and the model would give sensible responses, making learning even more fun and engaging. If that student then wanted to switch over to a different topic — say, how to make a good paper airplane — LaMDA could continue the conversation without any retraining.

This is one of the ways we believe LaMDA can make information and computing radically more accessible and easier to use (and you can learn more about that here). 

We have been researching and developing language models for many years. We’re focused on ensuring LaMDA meets our incredibly high standards on fairness, accuracy, safety and privacy, and that it is developed consistently with our AI Principles. And we look forward to incorporating conversation features into products like Google Assistant, Search and Workspace, as well as exploring how to give capabilities to developers and enterprise customers.

LaMDA is a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it’s still only trained on text. When people communicate with each other they do it across images, text, audio and video. So we need to build multimodal models (MUM) to allow people to naturally ask questions across different types of information. With MUM you could one day plan a road trip by asking Google to “find a route with beautiful mountain views.” This is one example of how we’re making progress towards more natural and intuitive ways of interacting with Search.

Pushing the frontier of computing

Translation, image recognition and voice recognition laid the foundation for complex models like LaMDA and multimodal models. Our compute infrastructure is how we drive and sustain these advances, and TPUs, our custom-built machine learning processes, are a big part of that. Today we announced our next generation of TPUs: the TPU v4. These are powered by the v4 chip, which is more than twice as fast as the previous generation. One pod can deliver more than one exaflop, equivalent to the computing power of 10 million laptops combined. This is the fastest system we’ve ever deployed, and a historic milestone for us. Previously to get to an exaflop, you needed to build a custom supercomputer. And we'll soon have dozens of TPUv4 pods in our data centers, many of which will be operating at or near 90% carbon-free energy. They’ll be available to our Cloud customers later this year.

Images of a TPU v4 chip tray, and of TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center

Left: TPU v4 chip tray; Right: TPU v4 pods at our Oklahoma data center 

It’s tremendously exciting to see this pace of innovation. As we look further into the future, there are types of problems that classical computing will not be able to solve in reasonable time. Quantum computing can help. Achieving our quantum milestone was a tremendous accomplishment, but we’re still at the beginning of a multiyear journey. We continue to work to get to our next big milestone in quantum computing: building an error-corrected quantum computer, which could help us increase battery efficiency, create more sustainable energy and improve drug discovery. To help us get there, we’ve opened a new state of the art Quantum AI campus with our first quantum data center and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

A photo of the interior of our new Quantum AI campus

Inside our new Quantum AI campus.

Safer with Google

At Google we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. And advances in computer science and AI are how we continue to make them better. We keep more users safe by blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages and potential cyber attacks than anyone else in the world.

Our focus on data minimization pushes us to do more, with less data. Two years ago at I/O, I announced Auto-Delete, which encourages users to have their activity data automatically and continuously deleted. We’ve since made Auto-Delete the default for all new Google Accounts. Now, after 18 months we automatically delete your activity data, unless you tell us to do it sooner. It’s now active for over 2 billion accounts.

All of our products are guided by three important principles: With one of the world’s most advanced security infrastructures, our products are secure by default. We strictly uphold responsible data practices so every product we build is private by design. And we create easy to use privacy and security settings so you’re in control.

Long-term research: Project Starline

We were all grateful to have video conferencing over the last year to stay in touch with family and friends, and keep schools and businesses going. But there is no substitute for being together in the room with someone. 

Several years ago we kicked off a project called Project Starline to use technology to explore what’s possible. Using high-resolution cameras and custom-built depth sensors, it captures your shape and appearance from multiple perspectives, and then fuses them together to create an extremely detailed, real-time 3D model. The resulting data is many gigabits per second, so to send an image this size over existing networks, we developed novel compression and streaming algorithms that reduce the data by a factor of more than 100. We also developed a breakthrough light-field display that shows you the realistic representation of someone sitting in front of you. As sophisticated as the technology is, it vanishes, so you can focus on what’s most important. 

We’ve spent thousands of hours testing it at our own offices, and the results are promising. There’s also excitement from our lead enterprise partners, and we’re working with partners in health care and media to get early feedback. In pushing the boundaries of remote collaboration, we've made technical advances that will improve our entire suite of communications products. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

A person in a booth talking to someone over Project Starline

A person having a conversation with someone over Project Starline.

Solving complex sustainability challenges

Another area of research is our work to drive forward sustainability. Sustainability has been a core value for us for more than 20 years. We were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007. We were the first to match our operations with 100% renewable energy in 2017, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Last year we eliminated our entire carbon legacy. 

Our next ambition is our biggest yet: operating on carbon free energy by the year 2030. This represents a significant step change from current approaches and is a moonshot on the same scale as quantum computing. It presents equally hard problems to solve, from sourcing carbon-free energy in every place we operate to ensuring it can run every hour of every day. 

Building on the first carbon-intelligent computing platform that we rolled out last year, we’ll soon be the first company to implement carbon-intelligent load shifting across both time and place within our data center network. By this time next year we’ll be shifting more than a third of non-production compute to times and places with greater availability of carbon-free energy. And we are working to apply our Cloud AI with novel drilling techniques and fiber optic sensing to deliver geothermal power in more places, starting in our Nevada data centers next year.

Investments like these are needed to get to 24/7 carbon-free energy, and it’s happening in Mountain View, California, too. We’re building our new campus to the highest sustainability standards. When completed, these buildings will feature a first-of-its-kind dragonscale solar skin, equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts. They will house the largest geothermal pile system in North America to help heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It’s been amazing to see it come to life.

Images with a rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; and a model view with dragon scale solar skin.

Left: Rendering of the new Charleston East campus in Mountain View, California; Right: Model view with dragon scale solar skin.

A celebration of technology

I/O isn’t just a celebration of technology but of the people who use it, and build it — including the millions of developers around the world who joined us virtually today. Over the past year we’ve seen people use technology in profound ways: To keep themselves healthy and safe, to learn and grow, to connect and to help one another through really difficult times. It’s been inspiring to see and has made us more committed than ever to being helpful in the moments that matter. 

I look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s I/O — in person, I hope. Until then, be safe and well.

New safety section in Google Play will give transparency into how apps use data



We work closely with developers to keep Google Play a safe, trusted space for billions of people to enjoy the latest Android apps. Today, we’re pre-announcing an upcoming safety section in Google Play that will help people understand the data an app collects or shares, if that data is secured, and additional details that impact privacy and security.


Developers agree that people should have transparency and control over their data. And they want simple ways to communicate app safety that are easy to understand and help users to make informed choices about how their data is handled. Developers also want to give additional context to explain data use and how safety practices could affect the app experience. So in addition to the data an app collects or shares, we’re introducing new elements to highlight whether:

  1. The app has security practices, like data encryption

  2. The app follows our Families policy

  3. The app needs this data to function or if users have choice in sharing it

  4. The app’s safety section is verified by an independent third-party

  5. The app enables users to request data deletion, if they decide to uninstall


This can be a big change, so we’re sharing this in advance and building with developers alongside us.


What this section will include


Among other things, we’ll ask developers to share: 

  • What type of data is collected and stored: Examples of potential options are approximate or precise location, contacts, personal information (e.g. name, email address), photos & videos, audio files, and storage files

  • How the data is used: Examples of potential options are app functionality and personalization 


Similar to app details like screenshots and descriptions, developers are responsible for the information disclosed in their section. Google Play will introduce a policy that requires developers to provide accurate information. If we find that a developer has misrepresented the data they’ve provided and is in violation of the policy, we will require the developer to fix it. Apps that don’t become compliant will be subject to policy enforcement.


What you can expect


All apps on Google Play - including Google's own apps - will be required to share this information and provide a privacy policy. 


We’re committed to ensuring that developers have plenty of time to prepare. This summer, we’ll share the new policy requirements and resources, including detailed guidance on app privacy policies. Starting Q2 2022, new app submissions and app updates must include this information.


Target Timeline (Dates subject to change)


In the future, we’ll continue providing new ways to simplify control for users and automate more work for developers.


In the meantime, here are some resources to help you design secure & privacy-friendly apps


We’re excited to advance our partnership with developers to make Google Play a trustworthy platform for everyone.


Posted by Suzanne Frey, VP, Product, Android Security and Privacy

Tips and shortcuts for a more productive spring

Posted by Bruno Panara, Google Registry Team

An animation of a person at a desk using a laptop and drinking out of a mug while different domain names pop up.

In my previous life as a startup entrepreneur, I found that life was more manageable when I was able to stay organized — a task that’s easier said than done. At Google Registry, we've been keeping an eye out for productivity and organization tools, and we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you today, just in time for spring cleaning.

.new shortcuts to save you time

Since launching .new shortcuts last year, we’ve seen a range of companies use .new domains to help their users get things done faster on their websites.

  • If your digital workspace looks anything like mine, you’ll love these shortcuts: action.new creates a new Workona workspace to organize your Chrome tabs, and task.new helps keep track of your to-dos and projects in Asana.
  • Bringing together notes and ideas can make it easier to get work done: coda.new creates a new Coda document to collect all your team’s thoughts, and jam.new starts a new collaborative Google Jamboard session.
  • Spring cleaning wouldn’t be complete without a tidy cupboard: With sell.new you can create an eBay listing in minutes and free up some closet space. And if you own or manage a business, stay on top of your orders and keep services flowing by giving the shortcut — invoice.new — a try.

Visit whats.new to browse all the .new shortcuts, including our Spring Spotlights section.

Six startups helping you increase productivity

We recently sat down with six startups to learn how they’re helping their clients be more productive. From interviewing and hiring, to managing teamwork, calendars and meetings, check out these videos to learn how you can make the most of your time:

Arc.dev connects developers with companies hiring remotely, helping them find their next opportunity.

The founders of byteboard.dev, who came through Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, thought that technical interviews were inefficient. So they redesigned them from the ground up to be more fair and relevant to real-world jobs.

To run more efficient meetings, try fellow.app. Streamlining agendas, note taking, action items and decision recording can help your team build great meeting habits.

Friday.app helps you organize your day so you can stay focused while sharing and collaborating with remote teammates.

Manage your time productively using inmotion.app, a browser extension that is a search bar, calendar, tab manager and distraction blocker, all in one.

No time to take your pet to the groomers? Find a groomer who will come to you and treat your pet to an in-home grooming session with pawsh.app.

Whether you’re a pet parent, a busy professional or just looking to sell your clutter online, we hope these tools help you organize and save time this season.

Tips and shortcuts for a more productive spring

In my previous life as a startup entrepreneur, I found that life was more manageable when I was able to stay organized — a task that’s easier said than done. At Google Registry, we've been keeping an eye out for productivity and organization tools, and we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you today, just in time for spring cleaning.

.new shortcuts to save you time

Since launching .new shortcuts last year, we’ve seen a range of companies use .new domains to help their users get things done faster on their websites. 

  • If your digital workspace looks anything like mine, you’ll love these shortcuts: action.new creates a new Workona workspace to organize your Chrome tabs, and task.new helps keep track of your to-dos and projects in Asana.

  • Bringing together notes and ideas can make it easier to get work done: coda.new creates a new Coda document to collect all your team’s thoughts, and jam.new starts a new collaborative Google Jamboard session. 

  • Spring cleaning wouldn’t be complete without a tidy cupboard: With sell.new you can create an eBay listing in minutes and free up some closet space. And if you own or manage a business, stay on top of your orders and keep services flowing by giving the shortcut — invoice.new — a try. 

Visit whats.new to browse all the .new shortcuts, including our Spring Spotlights section.

Six startups helping you increase productivity

We recently sat down with six startups to learn how they’re helping their clients be more productive. From interviewing and hiring, to managing teamwork, calendars and meetings, check out these videos to learn how you can make the most of your time:

Arc.dev connects developers with companies hiring remotely, helping them find their next opportunity. 

An illustration of a laptop screen with Christine's face and name on it, surrounded by other logos like a calendar and a lock.
10:25

The founders of byteboard.dev, who came through Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, thought that technical interviews were inefficient. So they redesigned them from the ground up to be more fair and relevant to real-world jobs. 

An illustration showing Sargun and Nicole's faces and names on a laptop screen, surrounded by logos symbolizing productivity.
10:25

To run more efficient meetings, try fellow.app. Streamlining agendas, note taking, action items and decision recording can help your team build great meeting habits.

An illustration showing Aydin's face and name on a laptop screen, surrounded by images symbolizing productivity.
10:25

Friday.app helps you organize your day so you can stay focused while sharing and collaborating with remote teammates. 

An illustration showing Luke's face and name on a laptop screen, surrounded by images symbolizing productivity.
10:25

Manage your time productively using inmotion.app, a browser extension that puts your time on auto-pilot.

An illustration showing Harry's face and name on a laptop screen, surrounded by images symbolizing productivity.
10:25

No time to take your pet to the groomers? Find a groomer who will come to you and treat your pet to an in-home grooming session with pawsh.app.

An illustration showing Karthik's name and face on a laptop screen, surrounded by images symbolizing productivity.
10:25

Whether you’re a pet parent, a busy professional or just looking to sell your clutter online, we hope these tools help you organize and save time this season. 

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These Black tech creators are changing the domain

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Google Developer Student Club 2021 Lead applications are open!

Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs

Hey, student developers! If you’re passionate about programming and are ready to use your technology skills to help your community, then you should become a Google Developer Student Clubs Lead!

Application forms for the upcoming 2021-2022 academic year are NOW OPEN. Get started at goo.gle/gdsc-leads.

Want to know more? Learn more about the program below.

What are Google Developer Student Clubs?

Google Developer Student Clubs are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies. With clubs hosted in 106 countries around the world, students from undergraduate and graduate programs with an interest in leading a community are welcome. Together, students learn the latest in Android App Development, Google Cloud Platform, Flutter, and so much more.

By joining a GDSC, students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and put theory to practice by building solutions for local businesses and their community.

How will I improve my skills?

As a Google Developer Student Club Lead you will have the chance to…

  • Gain mentorship from Google.
  • Join a global community of leaders.
  • Practice by sharing your skills.
  • Help students grow.
  • Build solutions for real life problems.

How can I find a Google Developer Student Club near me?

Google Developer Student Clubs are now in 106 countries with 1250+ groups. Find a club near you or learn how to start your own, here.

When do I need to submit the Application form?

We encourage students to submit their forms as soon as possible. You can learn more about your region’s application deadline, here. Make sure to learn more about our program criteria.

Get Started

From working to solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to helping local communities make informed voting decisions, Google Developer Student Club leads are learning valuable coding skills while making a true difference. As a lead from a Club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia put it,

“The secret to our club’s success was that we were able to cultivate a heart of service and a culture of open mentorship.”

We can’t wait to see what our next group of Google Developer Student Club leads will accomplish this year. Join the fun and get started, here.



*Google Developer Student Clubs are student-led independent organizations, and their presence does not indicate a relationship between Google and the students' universities.

Modernizing your Google App Engine applications

Posted by Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Modernizing your Google App Engine applications header

Next generation service

Since its initial launch in 2008 as the first product from Google Cloud, Google App Engine, our fully-managed serverless app-hosting platform, has been used by many developers worldwide. Since then, the product team has continued to innovate on the platform: introducing new services, extending quotas, supporting new languages, and adding a Flexible environment to support more runtimes, including the ability to serve containerized applications.

With many original App Engine services maturing to become their own standalone Cloud products along with users' desire for a more open cloud, the next generation App Engine launched in 2018 without those bundled proprietary services, but coupled with desired language support such as Python 3 and PHP 7 as well as introducing Node.js 8. As a result, users have more options, and their apps are more portable.

With the sunset of Python 2, Java 8, PHP 5, and Go 1.11, by their respective communities, Google Cloud has assured users by expressing continued long-term support of these legacy runtimes, including maintaining the Python 2 runtime. So while there is no requirement for users to migrate, developers themselves are expressing interest in updating their applications to the latest language releases.

Google Cloud has created a set of migration guides for users modernizing from Python 2 to 3, Java 8 to 11, PHP 5 to 7, and Go 1.11 to 1.12+ as well as a summary of what is available in both first and second generation runtimes. However, moving from bundled to unbundled services may not be intuitive to developers, so today we're introducing additional resources to help users in this endeavor: App Engine "migration modules" with hands-on "codelab" tutorials and code examples, starting with Python.

Migration modules

Each module represents a single modernization technique. Some are strongly recommended, others less so, and, at the other end of the spectrum, some are quite optional. We will guide you as far as which ones are more important. Similarly, there's no real order of modules to look at since it depends on which bundled services your apps use. Yes, some modules must be completed before others, but again, you'll be guided as far as "what's next."

More specifically, modules focus on the code changes that need to be implemented, not changes in new programming language releases as those are not within the domain of Google products. The purpose of these modules is to help reduce the friction developers may encounter when adapting their apps for the next-generation platform.

Central to the migration modules are the codelabs: free, online, self-paced, hands-on tutorials. The purpose of Google codelabs is to teach developers one new skill while giving them hands-on experience, and there are codelabs just for Google Cloud users. The migration codelabs are no exception, teaching developers one specific migration technique.

Developers following the tutorials will make the appropriate updates on a sample app, giving them the "muscle memory" needed to do the same (or similar) with their applications. Each codelab begins with an initial baseline app ("START"), leads users through the necessary steps, then concludes with an ending code repo ("FINISH") they can compare against their completed effort. Here are some of the initial modules being announced today:

  • Web framework migration from webapp2 to Flask
  • Updating from App Engine ndb to Google Cloud NDB client libraries for Datastore access
  • Upgrading from the Google Cloud NDB to Cloud Datastore client libraries
  • Moving from App Engine taskqueue to Google Cloud Tasks
  • Containerizing App Engine applications to execute on Cloud Run

Examples

What should you expect from the migration codelabs? Let's preview a pair, starting with the web framework: below is the main driver for a simple webapp2-based "guestbook" app registering website visits as Datastore entities: 

class MainHandler(webapp2.RequestHandler):
    'main application (GET) handler'
    def get(self):
        store_visit(self.request.remote_addr, self.request.user_agent)
        visits = fetch_visits(LIMIT)
        tmpl = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'index.html')
        self.response.out.write(template.render(tmpl, {'visits': visits}))

A "visit" consists of a request's IP address and user agent. After visit registration, the app queries for the latest LIMIT visits to display to the end-user via the app's HTML template. The tutorial leads developers a migration to Flask, a web framework with broader support in the Python community. An Flask equivalent app will use decorated functions rather than webapp2's object model: 

@app.route('/')
def root():
    'main application (GET) handler'
    store_visit(request.remote_addr, request.user_agent)
    visits = fetch_visits(LIMIT)
    return render_template('index.html', visits=visits)

The framework codelab walks users through this and other required code changes in its sample app. Since Flask is more broadly used, this makes your apps more portable.

The second example pertains to Datastore access. Whether you're using App Engine's ndb or the Cloud NDB client libraries, the code to query the Datastore for the most recent limit visits may look like this: 

def fetch_visits(limit):
    'get most recent visits'
    query = Visit.query()
    visits = query.order(-Visit.timestamp).fetch(limit)
    return (v.to_dict() for v in visits)

If you decide to switch to the Cloud Datastore client library, that code would be converted to:

def fetch_visits(limit):
    'get most recent visits'
    query = DS_CLIENT.query(kind='Visit')
    query.order = ['-timestamp']
    return query.fetch(limit=limit)

The query styles are similar but different. While the sample apps are just that, samples, giving you this kind of hands-on experience is useful when planning your own application upgrades. The goal of the migration modules is to help you separate moving to the next-generation service and making programming language updates so as to avoid doing both sets of changes simultaneously.

As mentioned above, some migrations are more optional than others. For example, moving away from the App Engine bundled ndb library to Cloud NDB is strongly recommended, but because Cloud NDB is available for both Python 2 and 3, it's not necessary for users to migrate further to Cloud Datastore nor Cloud Firestore unless they have specific reasons to do so. Moving to unbundled services is the primary step to giving users more flexibility, choices, and ultimately, makes their apps more portable.

Next steps

For those who are interested in modernizing their apps, a complete table describing each module and links to corresponding codelabs and expected START and FINISH code samples can be found in the migration module repository. We are also working on video content based on these migration modules as well as producing similar content for Java, so stay tuned.

In addition to the migration modules, our team has also setup a separate repo to support community-sourced migration samples. We hope you find all these resources helpful in your quest to modernize your App Engine apps!